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Driving of the Golden Spike
- When
- May 10, 1869
- Where
- Promontory Summit
Leland Stanford drove the golden spike at Promontory Summit on May 10, 1869, connecting the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads.
Stanford tapped the gold 'Last Spike' with a silver hammer to join the lines from Sacramento and Omaha. A duplicate spike was cast at the same time but engraved later with the correct date. The event was celebrated, though many Chinese workers were absent.
Sources
- Golden spike Wikipedia, revision of 2026-10-01
- First transcontinental railroad Wikipedia, revision of 2026-10-03
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.