The Railroad That Went Around

Brigham Young wanted the transcontinental railroad to run through Salt Lake City. He lobbied both the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific, and he argued the case clearly: his settlement was already the largest city in the region, and any railroad that bypassed it would be leaving the most significant population center in the intermountain west off the main line.

Both companies said no. The route through Salt Lake City would have required an additional seventy miles of track, and the engineers had already identified Ogden, forty miles to the north, as the natural junction where the two railroads could meet in the flattest, most efficient alignment across the basin. The mountain geography made the detour expensive, and neither company was willing to absorb it.

The golden spike was driven at Promontory Summit, northwest of Ogden, on May tenth, eighteen sixty-nine. The ceremony connected the two roads. The meeting point shifted to Ogden later that year, and Ogden became what the railroads had promised it would be: the crossroads of the west, the city where passengers transferred and freight changed hands, not Salt Lake City.

Young responded by building his own railroad. The Utah Central Railroad, financed by LDS church resources and built largely by Mormon settlers working for scrip, connected Salt Lake City to Ogden in eighteen seventy. It was built largely by Mormon settlers under Young's direction. When it opened, Young drove the last spike himself.

The Promontory ceremony is celebrated every year at Golden Spike National Historic Site. Salt Lake City has two interstate highways and a regional rail system. Ogden, the city that was the actual crossroads for the transcontinental era, is forty miles north and receives a fraction of the visitor attention. History remembers the spike. It does not always remember who got left off the route.