Driving through open country on a gorgeous Utah day on the north side of the Great Salt Lake as part of his Road Trip 2009, CNET News reporter Daniel Terdiman discovered the Golden Spike National Historic Site.
There, on May 10, 1869, the final tie was laid and the final spike--the "golden" spike--was driven in to create the Transcontinental Railroad. It was the meeting of the Central Pacific Railroad out of Sacramento, Calif., and the Union Pacific Railroad out of Omaha, Neb.
With that final spike, the railroad was completed, and for the first time, it was possible for a single train to cross (most of) the country.
"Two locomotives--Central Pacific's Jupiter and Union Pacific's No. 119--pulled up to the one rail gap left in the track," reads a National Park Service brochure. "After a golden spike was symbolically tapped, a final iron spike was driven to connect the railroads."
Click here for the entire Road Trip 2009 package.
Photo by Daniel Terdiman/CNET
