My Ghost Town Tour: Promontory, Box Elder County

On the way home from a weekend camping, we stopped in Promontory. I'll be back to American Fork Canyon this week sometime.

Since there's so much you can read about the Golden Spike, I'll cover a little about the short lived town. In May 1869 Promontory Summit was the site joining the transcontinental railroad. By December the tent down was dismantled and everyone moved to other towns. Train crews moved to Ogden, Utah as the Union Station became the meeting point of the Central Pacific and Union Railroads.

In the 1870s Central Pacific added a freight depot and rail yard and built a roundhouse and turntable. Support facilities for workers including a railroad eating stop, engine helper station and quarters for the Chinese section crew. It seems by June 1870 only about 70 people were living at the site, most employees of Central Pacific. Also according to Spude, there was a one room school and a commercial store with a post office. The place was completely deserted by the droughts in the Great Depression. Farmers moved away and the line was abandoned.

The old steel rails were removed and used for World War II. However, the wooden trestle was maintained as a back-up. Someone at the site told me the ties were original, but I doubt it. July 30, 1965 the Act for the Golden Spike National Historic Site was signed into law and the National Park Service has maintained the site of the Golden Spike ever since.

You can see pictures from the Golden Spike Centennial in 1969 here and here from Utah State History's website. Read about the Golden Spike itself, and the lesser known second golden spike, Nevada's silver spike and Arizona's gold and silver spike.

And now for pictures! I had fun lying down on the track for some of these!