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Promontory in Box Elder County, Utah, United States is an area of high ground west of Brigham City, Utah and northwest of Salt Lake City. Rising to an elevation of above sea level, it lies to the north of the Promontory Mountains and the Great Salt Lake. It is notable as the location of Promontory Summit where the First Transcontinental Railroad in the United States was officially completed on May 10, 1869. By the summer of 1868, Central Pacific had completed the first rail route through the Sierra Nevada and was now moving down towards the Interior Plains and the line of the Union Pacific. More than 4,000 workers, of whom two thirds were Chinese, had laid more than of track at altitudes above . In May 1869, the railheads of the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific railroads finally met at Promontory Summit, Utah Territory.〔 A specially-chosen Chinese and Irish crew had taken only 12 hours to lay the final of track in time for the ceremony.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=CHINESE-AMERICAN CONTRIBUTION TO TRANSCONTINENTAL RAILROAD )〕 ==Golden Spike== Promontory Summit had been agreed as the point where the two railheads would officially meet following meetings in Washington, D.C. in April 1869. A ceremony would be held to drive in the Last Spike to commemorate the occasion. However, the original date of May 8 had to be postponed for two days because of bad weather and a labor dispute on the Union Pacific side. On May 10,〔 in anticipation of the ceremony, Union Pacific's ''No. 119'' and Central Pacific's ''No. 60'' (better known as the ''Jupiter'') locomotives were drawn up face-to-face on Promontory Summit, separated only by the width of a single tie. It is unknown how many people attended the event; estimates run from as low as 500 to as many as 3,000 government and railroad officials and track workers who were present to witness the event. Historians later thought that the lack of Chinese workers seen in the official portrait of the occasion was due to racism; however their absence was due to timing: The more famous A.J. Russell photograph could not include the Chinese workers photographed earlier participating in the joining of the rails ceremony because at the moment the famous photo was being taken it was after the conclusion of the ceremony and the Chinese workers were away from the two locomotives to dine at J.H. Strobridge's boarding car, being honored and cheered by the CPRR ((Pacific Railroad )) management.〔 Fifty years later, three of the eight Chinese workers who brought up the last rail were guests of honor at the Promontory Summit's golden anniversary celebrations in Ogden, Utah in May 1919.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Chinese Laborers and the Construction of the Central Pacific )〕 The event at Promontory Summit, which was billed as the "wedding of the rails", was officiated by the Reverend John Todd.〔 Three spikes were driven: one (and probably the most famous) was the gold spike, one was silver, and one was a mix of gold, silver, and iron.〔Brian Sullivan, "(Day 98: Rev. John Todd )," ''Berkshire Eagle'', April 8, 2011.〕〔John Todd, ''(John Todd: The Story of his Life ),'' (Harper & brothers, 1876), 403-404.〕 In 1898 the golden spike was donated to the Stanford Museum (now Cantor Arts Center). The last laurel tie was destroyed in fires caused by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.〔Bowman, J.N. (''"Driving the Last Spike at Promontory, 1869"'' ) California Historical Society Quarterly, Vol. XXXVI, No. 2, June 1957, pp. 96–106, and Vol. XXXVI, No. 3, September 1957, pp. 263–274.〕 Stanford University loaned the original 1869 gold spike to Cecil B. DeMille for the 1939 film ''Union Pacific''. It was held aloft in the scene commemorating the actual event (a brass prop was used for the hammering sequence).〔''"DeMille Borrows Golden Spike"'' The United Press (Wire Service), January 19, 1939〕 Despite Promontory Summit historically marking the site where the first transcontinental railroad was officially completed, a direct coast-to-coast rail journey on this route was not achieved until 1873. On the West Coast the (Mossdale Bridge ), which spanned the San Joaquin River near Lathrop, California, was completed in September 1869, connecting Sacramento to the network. To the East, passengers had to cross the Missouri River between Council Bluffs, Iowa and Omaha, Nebraska by boat until the Union Pacific Missouri River Bridge was built in 1873. In the meantime, the first uninterrupted coast-to-coast railroad was completed in August 1870 at Strasburg, Colorado with the completion of the Denver extension of the Kansas Pacific Railway. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Promontory, Utah」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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