Hello and welcome to this day, a history show from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

We are in part two of week 20 of 50 weeks that shaped America.

We are talking about the golden spike, the final nail that tied

this country together by railroad. Last episode, we talked about how there was one company

working its way from Sacramento to the east over the Sierra Mountains, another company

coming from east to west across the plains, and in Promontory Summit, a town that's now about 66 miles northwest of salt lake

city they decide to link up so let's get into it people want spikes here as always mccall

hammer of van der boat and kelly carter jackson of wesley hello there hello jody hey there well nicky we

promised spikes you're going to get spikes you're going to get so many more spikes than you expect. Yeah. So first of all, let's let's start with the good news. This railroad finished way ahead of schedule. The idea was, you know how hard it is to plan a bicentennial, a semi-quincentennial.

The centennial was the same way.

They were planning some big events.

And one of the things that they wanted to do was they were like, we're going to finish the transcontinental railroad in 1876 just in time for this centennial.

They finished it in like 1869.

They're so far ahead of schedule.

So are we saying that like ruthless capitalism gets stuff done? Oh, I'm saying, ruthless capitalism and corruption. Fair enough. We'll get you there.

Early and under budget. Well, I don't know about under budget. I know. But they also were

behind schedule in the same breath.

And that is because the ceremony for driving this golden spike was planned to be held on May 8th.

They go so far as to engrave it on the spike.

But then there's bad weather and there's a labor dispute, kind of the history of the railroads going forward,

that delays the arrival of the Union Pacific

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