Golden Spike

We went for our history lesson of the day, the Golden Spike. This is the place were the Union Pacific Railroad and the Central Pacific Railroad companies met with their tracks to make the connection between the east and the west.

We went inside to check out the famous golden spike to find out that the real one is in Stanford, CA and we were looking at a replica. Therefore, I decided not to take a picture out of sheer protest. The museum and the film about the history of the railroads were pretty interesting. Then we went outside to check out the trains. My dad would have had a blast. They looked just awesome.

The detail in these trains was very impressive and they actually still run (I thought).


And then I started to read the signs with the history on these trains. Both original trains were scrapped for $1000 each in 1904 and we were looking at replicas. In 1942 the rails that the trains ran on were removed, since steel was needed for the war effort. I appreciate the honesty of the history site, however, I felt a little bit cheated and started wondering if this was really the site (or was it just a replica?). Nothing here was original. So now we can say: "We saw the Golden Spike, no we did not...."