The Saber and Scroll Journal Volume 8, Number 3, Spring 2020 | Page 17

and the Transcontinental Railroad
the nineteenth century saw the United
States establish the foundations of
a unique culture of entertainment and
leisure held up by economic progress
and advances in technology. Barnum’s
traveling circus and the Transcontinental
Railroad were two of the biggest
drivers of Reconstruction and Gilded
Age American culture going into the
turn of the twentieth century.
At 2:47 p.m. on May 10, 1869,
the “Continent was spanned with iron”
as the last spike was driven into the
ground, marking the completion of the
Transcontinental Railroad by joining
the Union Pacific and Central Pacific
railways. 1 A New York Times article
printed the telegrams that were sent
across the country during the momentous
moment and described the Golden
Spike ceremony at Promontory Point in
Utah that celebrated one of the greatest
achievements of Americans of the nineteenth
century after winning the Civil
War and abolishing slavery. 2 Connecting
the two railway lines from Omaha,
Nebraska, to Sacramento, California,
is still considered a feat of engineering
and has been called the “Eighth Wonder
of the World.” 3 A now-iconic photograph
from the Golden Spike ceremony
shows dozens of men gathered at the
site where locomotives from the Union
Pacific and Central Pacific railways met
for the first time. Samuel S. Montague,
Central Pacific Railroad’s chief engineer,
and Grenville M. Dodge, Union
Pacific Railroad’s chief engineer, are
seen shaking hands between the two locomotives.
4 With the railway connecting
America’s east and west coasts with
the telegraph line beside it, the “inhab-