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I've uploaded this image of The Golden Spike. The page is somewhat image-heavy at the moment, so when I added another image, it ended up creating large sections of white space. The article needs a bit of tinkering and image organization and I don't have a ton of time to play around with it, so I'm dropping a link here in the hopes that someone else will get a chance to rearrange things around. Neil916 ( Talk) 16:36, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
The Golden Spike" was commissioned by David Hewes and is 14.03 ounces of 17.6 Carat solid gold. It is highly polished and engraved on all sides, including the date of May 8, 1869, the date the Golden Spike Ceremony was supposed to be held. The Golden Spike is on display at the Leland Stanford Junior University Museum. The Second Solid Gold Spike was commissioned by the San Francisco Newsletter Newspaper Company. The only engraving on the second Golden Spike was on the head. This spike, along with the fancy Laurelwood Tie in which all four precious metal spikes were placed in pre-drilled holes, was on display at the Newsletter offices in San Francisco. Both the Spike and Tie, along with the entire Newsletter Offices were destroyed in the great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906. I know these facts from the four years I spent in researching America's First Transcontinental Railroad as an Interpretive Park Ranger at Golden Spike National Historic Site at Promontory Summit, Utah 1988-92. I have personally held The Golden Spike in this image when it "visited" Golden Spike NHS, plus Nevada's solid Silver Spike and Arizona Territory's Iron Spike plated in silver on the shaft and gold on the top, when they were on loan from the Smithsonian to the Union Pacific Museum in Omaha. They are currently in the Smithsonian.
My First-Person Living History program entitled "Hit or Myth," where an Irish Union Pacific Rail Working Angel returns to clarify the Golden Spike Myth-conceptions was featured at the 125th Anniversary of the Golden Spike Ceremony at Promontory Summit in 1994, as well as at the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento for RailFair '91 and '99 and a multitude of programs at Historic Societies in Utah, California, and Arizona. "Hit or Myth" will also be at the 150th Golden Spike Anniversary this next week. CrooksvilleIrish ( talk) 15:37, 2 May 2019 (UTC)
What is this article about? Is it about the golden spike itself, or is it about the ceremony in which the golden spike was driven, thus completing the transcontinental railroad in the US? The article seems to be confused about what it's talking about. Neil916 ( Talk) 16:51, 17 March 2010 (UTC).
There's a photograph accompanying this article which identifies an engine being carried on a flatcar as Virginia and Truckee Railroad No. 119. However, this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_and_Truckee_Railroad
identifies the engine as No.18, which had been decorated to resemble the historic No. 119 for use in the centennial celebration in 1969. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ormewood ( talk • contribs) 19:42, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
This has been fixed (thanks)... Ormewood ( talk) 18:31, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
If someone has information about the locations/fates of the two other spikes (two are in the article) I think it'd be a good addition to the article. ColinClark ( talk) 07:36, 5 July 2010 (UTC) Please see above. CrooksvilleIrish ( talk) 15:56, 2 May 2019 (UTC)
Many articles on Wikipedia have Pop Culture refs in them. People like to know if a subject is talked about, used, or referenced in other places. I am happy to provide reference material but am not sure how to put them in the article. Vsmith, please do not undo this again or I will have to report you for WR3 Crazy Blue Eyes ( talk) 18:58, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
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Well, it's the last day in April 2019. My name is Monte Crooks and in just 10 days, I return to Promontory Summit, Utah, where my Park Ranger career began back in 1988, just before the 119th Anniversary of the Golden Spike Ceremony. My First Person Living History Alter-Ego, Michael Keeney, comes down to Promontory as an Irish Rail-Working Angel for the Union Pacific Railroad in a presentation entitled "Hit or Myth." Michael's purpose is to clarify the Golden Spiked Mythconceptions, and there's a bunch o' them!
The greatest Myth is that Leland Stanford, using a regular iron spike hammer, DROVE a 17.6 Carat solid-gold spike into a railroad tie at Promontory Point, Utah. FAKE NEWS! Days before the completion of America's First Transcontinental Railroad, newspaper reporters aboard Leland Stanford's Dignitary train en route to Promontory actually wrote their "eyewitness" accounts of the event and telegraphed the fiction to their San Francisco Newsletter Newspaper Company. The limited information used to imagine the scenario was that the reporters knew Stanford had a Golden Spike upon which the date May 8th, 1869 was engraved. Also, the only place predominately marked upon their map of the vicinity of where the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads were to meet was Promontory Point. To the reporter's minds, it was obvious that Stanford would drive the Spike at Promontory Point on May 8th!
In 150 years, the Fake News still prevails. Completion took place at Promontory Summit, thirty-seven miles North of the Point, and nobody tried to do anything but ceremonially "tap" the four precious metal Spikes brought to the Summit. Michael Keeney's job is to replace the fiction with the facts, a domitable task indeed! I will update this talk as the day to leave from Prescott, Arizona to the Celebration arrives, and will fill in my observations of the Sesquicentennial Reverie!
CrooksvilleIrish ( talk) 01:14, 1 May 2019 (UTC)
If the most common sense of the term, “aftermath,” is in reference to negative repercussions of a terrible event, I wonder if this section title could be changed to a more fitting name. Many dictionaries probably agree about the negative meaning of the word, that it does refer to the things that follow from an event, but “especially one of a disastrous or unfortunate nature,” as dictionary.com explains it. The material under the Aftermath heading doesn’t say the Last Spike ceremony was a disastrous episode in US history; at worst it just suggests it wasn’t originally as big a deal as it is often thought to have been. So, I would submit that the article would be slightly improved if the heading of that section were changed to something more in keeping with the article’s neutral tone. Maybe, for example, “Significance,” “Subsequent Events,” “Historical Importance,” etc. 24.229.74.212 ( talk) 00:26, 22 April 2020 (UTC)