The Ultimate Demise of the Golden Spike

I'm not really sure if it can be considered torture to drag your child out into the desert and force history upon her, but Sara and I are guilty as charged. I consider it recourse for the horrible things that my father subjected me to during my youth. While the rest of my friends were spending their summers lying about like slugs playing Street Fighter II, I was being paraded through semi-local museums and historical sites learning stuff. Its a wonder I survived. I suppose it was good for me though because now I'm very good at not throwing up in cars, and I know a lot about sagebrush. And speaking of artemisia tridentata, there is an awful lot of it at America's most famous square inch, the site where the Golden Spike was laid to complete the transcontinental railroad. Well...technically it didn't complete the railroad, but more on that later. (Ay! What a cliffhanger!)
We're just not fit to be tied (pun intended), so we took the drive up to the northern coast of the Great Salt Lake to see the spike and learn about trainage of the mid 1800s, once again. My hometown is only like an hour away from Promontory Summit, and I remember going out there every summer to do scout service projects and it was absolutely horrible. I think I'm still sweating and sun burnt from those service projects. But it also taught me to be all respectful about the gigantic effort put forth by my forefathers to tame the wild west. Here's me between the trains sitting at the alleged spot where one of the four tycoons who funded the railroad, ex-California governor Leland Stanford, wopped the ceremonial golden spike into the ceremonial polished laurel tie using his ceremonial silver hammer and his ceremonial tycoon muscles. This is Zoe and I in front of an original replica of the golden spike. Immediately after the ceremonial wopping by Leland Stanford, the golden spike was yanked out and replaced by a regular old iron one. The golden spike was donated to the Stanford Museum in Stanford, California. Hmmm...I wonder why it ended up there. Someday I'll go see that spike. Mark my words. Unfortunately I won't be able to see the polished tie the spike was wopped into because it was burnt in the fires from the 1906 San Fransisco Earthquake. So what is there to see at Promontory Summit? The golden spike is gone, the last tie's gone, the trains are replicas...there's the track, right? Nope. The actual track that was built through the area was dug up in 1942 and used as war materials. I'm glad there are people out there that make replicas of things like this so I can at least pretend to be witnessing history. Even though all the relics are gone, the site's still there, and I bet nobody ever completed a transcontinental railroad in your homestate! Neener neener.