Golden Spike Monument
Near Omaha, Iowa
This giant golden spike, more than fifty feet of reinforced concrete, marks Council Bluffs as the eastern starting point of the first transcontinental railroad. President Abraham Lincoln himself designated this spot as Mile Zero, the place where the Union Pacific began laying rails westward. On May tenth, eighteen sixty-nine, the line met the tracks coming east from California at Promontory Summit in Utah, and a golden spike joined the two halves of the nation by rail.
Seventy years later, in nineteen thirty-nine, the city built this towering monument to celebrate the anniversary and the premiere of Cecil B. DeMille's film Union Pacific. Designed by city engineer Jack Boyne and standing about one hundred times the size of the original ceremonial spike, it was dedicated before a large crowd.
It remains a proud reminder that the great railroad began right here.
