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FORD^ UNIVERSITYWILD WEST JUNE 2019Travel on the Oregon and other westering trails went into sharp
decline, as the new way to go was faster, cheaper and safer. “Rail-
roads of the West excelled at creating industrial order where no
pattern of organization existed apart from nature, of being agents
of change that essentially tamed the frontier,” Carlos A. Schwantes
wrote in “How Railroads Took the ‘Wild’ out of the West,” in the
June 2008 Wild West [historynet.com/transcontinental-railroad].
Within three years, though, the Union Pacific faced bank-
ruptcy, as construction subcontractor Crédit Mobilier had signifi-
cantly overcharged UP and also bribed powerful Washington
politicians with discounted stock. Despite the scandal, the rail-
road remained in business, and the present-day Union Pacific
Railroad Co., headquartered in Omaha, hauls freight in 23 states
across the West. Almost a dozen years after completion of the
first transcontinental railroad, the Southern Pacific Railroad
opened a second transcontinental railroad, and others followed.
In 1885 the Southern Pacific leased the Central Pacific, which
formally merged into the Southern Pacific in 1959.
The Union Pacific is hosting “The Great Race to Promontory”
[up.com/goldenspike] sesquicentennial activities and celebra-Worth Its Weight
Top: Andrew J. Russell’s photographs of the 1869 Promontory Summit ceremony included this
one of Union Pacific engineers. Above: Leland Stanford is said to have driven this Golden Spike
(aka the “Last Spike”) at Promontory Summit, before it was pried up and rushed to California.
It’s on display at Stanford University, the school the namesake railroad magnate founded in 1885.