Facts and Fictions

Linda Burton posting from Sacramento, California – Tucked away in a corner of the California State Railroad Museum in a temperature-controlled case is the golden “Lost Spike.” Hanging on the wall near the spike are a portrait and a photograph – two depictions of the famous “moment in time” when the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads met in Promontory, Utah, thus connecting by rail the eastern and western states. The date was May 10, 1869. Why was the golden spike lost? And why do the portrait and the photograph present such a different atmosphere of the occasion? The visitor is invited to study, and ponder.

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