Brigham CIty, Utah

From Rawlins we drove to Lyman, WY for one night and then on to Brigham City, UT.    We camped at a very nice urban campground called The Golden Spike.    The town is located about 30 miles from the Golden Spike National Historic Site where the railroads met and joined the country by rail from east to west on May 10, 1869.   As soon as we were set up, we headed for the site.

This site was known as Promotory Summit.    The two engines were the Jupiter (Central Pacific) and 119 (Union Pacific).   After a golden spike was symbolically tapped, a final iron spike was driven to connect the railroads.   The Central Pacific had laid 690 miles of track, Union Pacific 1086.   They had crossed 1,776 miles of desert, rivers, and mountains to bind together the East and the West.  Central Pacific hired several thousand Chinese and had to ship every rail, spike, and locomotive 15,000 miles around Cape Horn.    Union Pacific hired Irish, German, and Italian immigrants, Civil War veterans from both sides, ex-slaves and AMerican Indians - 8,000 to 10,000 workers in all.

Ogden, Utah was about 25 miles south of Brigham City, and the following morning we drove down to tour the Union Station.   It's a beautiful building and since the depot is no longer a passenger depot it now houses a restaurant, a small Cowboy Museum, a Browning gun museum, the Browning's antique car museum, and the railroad museum.   We toured all of them, and then headed for lunch.   After lunch we went back to the Union Station to see the rolling stock that is on display there.  

We spent our final day in Brigham City before heading to Montpelier, ID over the July 4 holiday.