Then the spikers! These brawny, half-naked, sweaty giants—what a grand spanging music of labor rang from under their hammers! Three strokes to a spike for most spikers! Only two strokes for such as Casey or Neale! Ten spikes to a rail—four hundred rails to a mile! ... How many million times had brawny arms swung and sledges clanged!
Forward every day the work-trains crept westward, closer and closer to that great hour when they would meet the work-trains coming east.
The momentum now of the road-laying was tremendous. The spirit that nothing could stop had become embodied in a scientific army of toilers, a mass, a machine, ponderous, irresistible, moving on to the meeting of the rails.
Every day the criss-cross of ties lengthened out along the winding road-bed, and the lines of glistening rails kept pace with them. The sun beat down hot—the dust flew in sheets and puffs—the smoky veils floated up from the desert. Red-shirted toilers, blue-shirted toilers, half-naked toilers, sweat and bled, and laughed grimly, and sucked at their pipes, and bent their broad backs. The pace had quickened to the limit of human endurance. Fury of sound filled the air. Its rhythmical pace was the mighty gathering impetus of a last heave, a last swing.
Promontory Point was the place destined to be famous as the meeting of the rails.
On that summer day in 1869, which was to complete the work, special trains arrived from west and east. The Governor of California, who was also president of the western end of the line, met the Vice-President of the United States and the directors of the Union Pacific. Mormons from Utah were there in force. The Government was represented by officers and soldiers in uniform; and these, with their military band, lent the familiar martial air to the last scene of the great enterprise. Here mingled the Irish and Negro laborers from the east with the Chinese and Mexican from the west. Then the eastern paddies laid the last rails on one end, while the western coolies laid those on the other. The rails joined. Spikes were driven, until the last one remained.
The Territory of Arizona had presented a spike of gold, silver, and iron; Nevada had given one of silver, and a railroad tie of laurel wood; and the last spike of all—of solid gold—was presented by California.
The driving of the last spike was to be heard all over the United States. Omaha was the telegraphic center. The operator here had informed all inquirers, “When the last spike is driven at Promontory Point we will say, ‘Done!’”
The magic of the wire was to carry that single message abroad over the face of the land.
The President of the United States was to be congratulated, as were the officers of the army, and the engineers of the work. San Francisco had arranged a monster celebration marked by the booming of cannon and enthusiastic parades. Free railroad tickets into Sacramento were to fill that city with jubilant crowds. At Omaha cannons were to be fired, business abandoned, and the whole city given over to festivity. Chicago was to see a great parade and decoration. In New York a hundred guns were to boom out the tidings. Trinity Church was to have special services, and the famous chimes were to play “Old Hundred.” In Philadelphia a ringing of the Liberty Bell in Independence Hall would initiate a celebration. And so it would be in all prominent cities of the Union.