Promontory Summit, May 10, 1869
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Apr 28, 1869 CP crews lay ten miles of track in a day, three and a half miles from Promontory. UP decides to haul track to Promontory Summit to block CP

Apr 30, 1869 CP track reaches Promontory Summit, 690 miles from Sacramento

May 5, 1869 UP crews finish Big Trestle and Carmichael Cut on east slope

May 9, 1869 UP track reaches Promontory Summit, 1,086 miles from Omaha; Wells, Fargo & Co. runs last Overland stage

May 10, 1869 Last Spike ceremony. UP decides not to remove from Promontory Summit, which becomes UP-CP junction
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F) Deciding on the Junction Point

In early April, the site of Promontory Summit consisted of a hurriedly constructed grade for the CP, a grade for the UP, a wagon trace, and a few errant survey stakes. Its name did not appear in any of the discussions about the junction point, nor was it expected to be the great “junction city,” filling the pages of newspapers. No reporter bothered to describe Promontory Summit in glowing terms, if at all.

To the east, the UP track layers were racing along the shore line of Salt Lake headed west, already in a losing race to Humboldt Wells, Nevada, then even to Monument Point on the Salt Lake’s northwest shore. The CP had hurriedly built track across Nevada and on to the lake shore bound for Ogden, but the UP had already beaten them to the Mormon City. No one knew where the CP and UP would meet, or if they would meet. Maneuvers in Washington, however, would have an immediate effect on the railroad construction crews and on Promontory Summit.

In Washington, D. C., over the night of April 8-9, chief engineer Dodge of the UP met with vice president Huntington of the CP in the home of Congressman and UP stock holder Sam Hooper. UP director Rowland G. Hazard was there as well. There they hammered out an agreement on the meeting of the rails, an agreement that reflected the realities of construction progress, and one which brought Promontory Summit into the limelight. Huntington was able to add a clause, which gave the CP what it wanted, a junction at or near Ogden, and to the UP executive committee months of anxiety and discussions about how to void the agreement. It read, in part:

The place where the two roads shall meet and connect shall be at some point within eight miles of Ogden.

The Union Pacific company shall complete the track to the summit of Promontory Point (sic.) to which place the Central shall build from the west, and the Central Pacific company shall pay to the Union the cost of the road without rolling stock from the terminus near Ogden as aforesaid to Promontory Point (sic.)

The next day, on April 10, the U. S. Congress quickly passed a resolution blessing the agreement to join the rails at “Promontory Summit, at which place the rails shall meet and connect and form one continuous line.” One presumes that Congress feared the CP and UP would build to the summit, but not connect, forcing transfers of a few feet by land between the tracks.

Huntington and Dodge wired the news, which was sent to the respective ends of track. Within a few days, Stanford ordered work stopped east of the Promontory. UP graders west of the Promontory were called back.

Thomas Morris and other UP engineers took the news as an opportunity. On April 12, the diary of UP bridge engineer at Promontory, Leonard Eicholtz, noted that he, Morris and two others staked a quarter section each at Promontory Summit. Surveyor Koons platted the ground and Schyler returned to erect a tent to hold their personal land claim.

Eicholtz hedged his bets and with partners platted a new town on Blue Creek at the foot of the uphill grade. He named it Altoona, after the famed railroad town near the great Horse Shoe Curve of the Pennsylvania Railroad, where he had cut his engineering teeth during the 1850s. By mid-April the group had taken up twelve or thirteen quarter sections at the Summit and at the base of the grade. They met in Morris’s tent and formed a land company in order to speculate on the new terminus.

Eicholtz’s diary indicates that he knew that the rails would meet at Promontory Summit, but not that the final junction would be at Ogden. On April 18, Eicholtz noted “the question of junction of the two roads still undecided.” He was part of a meeting at the summit two days later between Stanford for the CP and director Dillon, engineers Seymour and Reed and others for the UP, without conclusion. The CP planned to connect at Promontory but to run on to Ogden via the UP tracks; the UP countered that the question of final juncture was not resolved. Stanford wrote his colleagues that the UP officials were “surly” and intimated that the CP would never get possession of the road to Ogden. The Deseret News of April 28, broadcast to its readers that the UP would force the junction to remain where the rails would meet at Promontory Summit, not Ogden. The “junction city” would by default be at Promontory Summit.

G) Completing the Track and First days at Promontory Summit

On April 30, the Central Pacific’s crews, Chinese and Irish track layers and telegraph line builders, arrived at the survey station denoting the “Promontory Summit.” CP crews had completed their 690 mile railroad first. The CP’s Chinese crews began ballasting track and finishing the roadbed working back west from the end of the line. The UP – CP “summits” were about a half mile apart and no one was sure which would be the point of juncture.
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