photographer, and a professional railroader, while Hand himself provides a first-person perspective on his photographic mentors and approach to the craft. In a brief after- word, Jeff Brouws discusses Hand’s world- view and approach to railroad photography, comparing him to William Henry Jackson. This book makes a fine companion to Jim Shaughnessy’s The Call of Trains by the same publisher, and Hand’s body of work certainly stands on its own merit. I, for one, would look forward to a similar volume showcasing Hand’s North American diesel work. — WALT LANKENAU
The Un-Driving of the Golden Spike By Jeff Terry, Thornton H. Waite, and James J. Reisdorff. Published by South Platte Press, P.O. Box 163, David City, NE 68632; 402/367- 3554;
www.southplattepress.com. B&W with color cover; 80 pages, 9¹/₂”x8¹/₂”, softcover. $24.95 plus $5.00 shipping; NE residents add sales tax.
We all know the legend of the Driving
of the
Golden Spike at Promontory Sum- mit, Utah, on May 10, 1869. We also know that this twisting,
steeply- graded part of the
Transcontinental Railroad was replaced in 1904 by Southern Pacific’s Lucin Cutoff across the Great Salt Lake. But other than a vague awareness that the line was scrapped during World War II, the details of its existence, aban-
donment, and rebirth as a National Historic Site are often fuzzy, at best. This thick, well-re- searched and generously-illustrated softcover finally brings those details into sharp focus. The story begins with an explanation of how Promontory Summit, barely a settle- ment, ended up as the official meeting point of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific. The date for the official joining was to have been May 8, 1869, but unpaid workers waylaid a train carrying Union Pacific officials to the event and it encountered a washout en route. The first chapter includes several different views of the Driving of the Golden Spike, along with images taken immediately before and after the event, as well as a Promontory Summit “cityscape” which shows but two frame buildings and two tents. After the junction of the CP and UP was moved east to Ogden, Promontory Summit was relegated to the role of a CP helper sta- tion. After most traffic was diverted to the Lucin Cutoff across the Great Salt Lake in 1904, the line became the Southern Pacific Promontory Branch, which scratched out an existence on the meager local business. In 1916 a monument was built to mark the site of the Driving and as traffic withered, SP scrapped the line in 1942. SP’s efforts to abandon the route as early as 1933 are well documented.
An Un-Driving of the Golden Spike cere- mony was held at Promontory Summit on September 8, 1942, as two scrap trains met in a re-enactment of the famous 1869 scene. There’s a fine assortment of photos and a de- scription of the event, complete with officials prying up the putative “Last Spike” (provid- ed for the occason by the SP) with a crowbar.
As the crowd dispersed, the real
spike
pullers went to work and the two trains made their way east and west, pulling up the historic trackage behind them. The rails were relaid at several expanded military in- stallations in the West.
In the 1940s reporter Bernice Gibbs An- derson of Corinne, Utah, (located on the branch) wrote letters to Congress, the Presi- dent, and the National Park Service and urged them to make Promontory Summit a national monument. Partly due to her ef- forts, over the years re-enactments of the Driving were held all over Utah. Not until the 80th anniversary in 1949 did the action take place on the original grade at the origi- nal location, when Lucius Beebe and Charles Clegg hammered a spike into a de- caying crosstie in front of the monument. . Through the ’50s and ’60s the Promontory re-enactments fanned interest in memorial- izing the great event on a larger scale as the centennial in 1969 approached. Promontory Summit had been made a National Historic Site in 1957 and starting in 1958 improve- ments, small at first, were made and in 1962 the SP donated 15 miles of right of way to the U.S. Department of the Interior. Later, the government acquired more than 2000 acres of land for the Golden Spike National Historic Site and two miles of track, a visitor center, and replicas of CP Jupiter and UP No. 119 were authorized. The visitor center was finished in time for the centennial, and two Virginia & Truckee 4-4-0s were modified to represent the CP and UP engines. The book also documents the further develop- ment of the National Historic Site to date, including the delivery of newly-built operat-
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