chalcidbear said:
Today is the anniversary of the driving of the golden spike, completing the transcontinental railroad in 1869. A couple of interesting tidbits gleaned from this Wikipedia article: Leland Stanford whiffed on his strike, missing the spike, and immediately after it was driven in, the spike was removed and eventually ended up at Stanford Junior University:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_spike
So once again, the robber baron ended up with the gold.
That Wikipedia reference (quoted above) is 'incomplete' in several instances. The full article mentions several "golden spikes" including two cast in San Francisco (the Second one with the better engravings is at the Cal State RR museum).
Union Pacific was perhaps the first major government contractor to rob the Feds during construction (Credit Mobilier) and since management was primarily Union Army Generals, the Union Pacific has been given a pass several times over the last 100 + years by the Federal Government. In fact the Yellow Borg has eliminated the history of the Central Pacific (assimilated) and at times has taken credit for building both halves of the Transcontinental Railroad. In other words, the Central Pacific did not really exist and by extension, neither did Leland Stanford. Of the Big Four, Stanford may have actually ended up the poorest, the real robber baron of the four had to be C P Huntington.
Final note: only the Pacific half of the transcontinental railroad was completed at the time of the last spike.
A few days earlier the CP set a world record for track laying and drove a train over the new track at the end of the day. A few days earlier the UP had set the previous record but the track wasn't safe enough for train travel.
It took a few more weeks for the UP crews to upgrade their trackwork after May 10th to allow for regular train operations. The CP portion had been completed n April 29th.
