Matt had suggested a couple months earlier that he’d like to take us to Promontory Mount, at the North end of Salt Lake. Near Promontory Mount, two railroad construction crews butted up the rails originating from Sacramento at one end, and Omaha on the other in 1869. Matt and Mark have been train students since Matt was 5 and Mark from the time he become cognizant. I’d been interested in this spot since the time I saw it in a history book in grade school.
Hoa opted to stay home with Henry as we were going to be spending most of the next day in a van to the Grand Canyon. So it was the four of us going for the ride. We would follow I-84 from South Ogden to 1600N Rd, near Corinne, and then follow Promontory Rd to Lampo Junction and a left onto W7200N Rd. From there follow the posted directions to a well maked position, right square in the middle of NOfuckingwhere, Utah.
As we traveled north on I-84, the Wasatch Mountains bordered on the right, and their excuse for a lake, on the left. Luckely, I was a passenger, so I could take advantage of it by admiring the view and taking some pictures.
Some years back, Matt had given me a Sony Cybershot camera, with a magazine capable of holding 800 pictures at a time. I come from a time when taking pictures could cost you a significant amount of money, and so far, I’ve taken over 7 thousand pictures with it. I don’t know what Matt paid for the camera, but so far, it owes him back about 2k. As some of you will notice, there’s a radio antenna involved with some of the pictures I took. It’s a very small camera and I can hold it in the palm of my hand and operate the shutter release with my right, ring finger. What I did with most of the pictures I took, was to hold it out the window and squeeze the trigger, several hundred times.
Until we reached Corinne, the Wasatch mountains dominated the scenery for 1600′ up on my side. After turning left on to Promontory Rd, the landscape took on an older look.
The closer we got to the site, the more the countryside looked like this.
When we got to the corner of Promontory Rd, and W7200N Rd, this was on the corner.
This is one of the entrances to Thiokol where they test rocket engines for NASA and the military. This sign is advertising the test firing of a Delta GEM40 Rocket engine on June 16th and the test firing of an ATLANTIS STS125 Rocket engine on May 12th. The buildings and bunkers took up miles of space and if I were to ever want a spot to test rocket engines, this place was it. We drove for miles of scrub growth on rock outcropings and not a park to be seen anywhere. After some more wide vistas and interesting rock formations, we drove past this sign letting us know all was not lost.
After a couple more miles we came upon the buildings and a length of track that led from the middle of nowhere, to a barn that housed the two train engines. Inbetween those two points lays the spot where: two golden spikes, a silver one, a conglomorant of iron, gold and silver, and one of iron from the Mormons of Salt Lake City was driven connecting the rail line from Omaha to Sacremento. The two gold spikes came from California, the silver from Nevada, the mix from Arizona, and because John Smith was pissed ’cause it didn’t happen in Salt Lake City; the iron one.
There is a small building there containing a book and souveneur store, a theatre that explains the ceremony, a ticket counter and a small museum with artifacts from the era. After getting the tickets, we stepped on the back door and this is what was waiting for us.
As you can see from the picture, there was a strong wind blowing there, that never went away; the entire time I spent at that end of the country. Matt said that at times it would come up from the South, with the sand of the desert and the salt from the lake, that looked very similar to a fog. On that day long excursion, I drank two gallons of water and only pissed once, and that was a ceremonial one into the Last Cut. (More on that in a bit)
On the left side, was the “Jupiter” owned by the Central Pacific, originating in Sacramento, California. On the right is “Number 119″ owned by the Union Pacific and came from Omaha, Nebraska.
These two companies had obtained a contract from Congress, allowing them to build from their starting point towards the other, without ever saying where the two companies would meet. Instead, they paid them by the mile of track laid and discussed with each other for months on where the junction would be held. As you can see, our Government didn’t get stupid lately, it’s been going on a while. These two companies laid track side by each, in opposite directions, for over a hundred miles before they made up thier minds on where to put it. There was all kinds of politicing going on between different cities wanting the site and it was eventually decreed, to put it in the middle of nofuckingwhere. They did a really good job in their final decision.
During the summer months, the NPS (National Park Service) holds two demonstrations each day showing how both engines work. As the engines come in and out of their barn, they make a run alongside the main track on a sideing, giving people the opportunity to take movies as they travel. I’ll try and post the little movie I made with my camera in the video section of this page on myspace. (I think the Eckerman readers are out of luck)
On the way in to this place, Matt had shown us where these two tracks ran, and on the way out, we stopped and looked at an example. When I took this picture, we had turned on to one of the road beds that had been converted to vehicle traffic after the line had been abandoned, not long after it was built. The other line, which was never used can be seen running in a straight line beneath us.
Instead of traveling around the lake, they built a bridge that crossed it. Later that bridge was removed after they built a causeway, which they use today. You can see in this photo of the two cuts made side by each over/through a rock formation.
There is a sign along this road that explains about the “Last Cut” made into this gawdawful material they call rock. It’s all limestone from when it was a lake bottom and it looked to be a real bitch to work with. For any of those readers who’ve worked with nice clean stone, or even good concrete, it breaks up into nice clean edges. There isn’t anything nice or clean about this crap and I’ll bet it was a real MF’er to break out and haul away. Anyway, this proportedly was the last cut to be made through this stuff before Congress fianlly got their heads out of their ass’s and agreed on a location.
That trench right there is where I pissed for the first time that day. (wet spot not shown)
Must be I got a thing about leaving my DNA strewn across this world of ours. (I could do an entire series on the places I’ve pissed, and you’d be absolutly amazed) Anyway, after taking these pictures, we traveled further down this grade and through another one of these cuts.
It was about then when we saw some smoke rising up from the Thiokol testing facility. I remembered back to the days when I watched one of those birds take off the rails toward it’s target. The distance was far too great to hear the thunderous crackle or better yet, get a good whiff of it’s toxic smoke comin’ out it’s ass. But it was nice to remember.
A little further down this grade was a rock formation that reminded me of some on Mackinac Island and it turned out, they were both formed the same way. The difference being, the water level on the Straits of Mackinac lies 10′ below the rock and here it was 711′. While I took these photo’s I began thinking about huge rattlesnakes.
I seem to have run out of space for this blog so I’ll just post the rest of the pictures in the photo section. You won’t find any rattlesnake pictures ’cause I didn’t see any, but I sure got to thinking about it. Michigan has a few things going against it, but all we have are pigmy rattlers and those only found in the most marshly vegitated areas. I wanted to see one of those and at least one scorpion and maybe a lizard but I’d get more chances the next day when we headed for the Grand Canyon.
