Promontory Summit, northwest of Salt Lake City, Utah, is notable as the location where the First Transcontinental Railroad in the United States was officially completed on May 10, 1869. Numerous directors and dignitaries of the Union Pacific Railroad and the Central Pacific Railroad were in attendance. President Ulysses S. Grant himself hammered in the Golden Spike to join the two tracks.
The Ames Monument is a large pyramid in Albany County, Wyoming, designed by Henry Hobson Richardson and dedicated to brothers Oakes Ames and Oliver Ames, Jr. The brothers were Union Pacific Railroad financiers. The monument was built at a cost of $65,000 and completed in 1892.
The brothers garnered credit for connecting the nation by rail upon completion of the United States’ First Transcontinental Railroad in 1869. Oakes, a U.S. representative to the United States Congress from Massachusetts, asserted near total control of its construction, whereas Oliver became president of the Union Pacific Railroad (1866 – 1871). In 1873 investigators implicated Oakes in fraud associated with financing of the railroad. Congress subsequently censured Oakes, who resigned in 1873. He died soon thereafter.
Today, the Ames Monument is overseen by Wyoming State Parks, Historic Sites and Trails
Learn more about the Ames Monument and the building of the Transcontinental Railroad in Wyoming.
Pictured above is the Union Pacific Round House. The roundhouse was one of the shops built by the Union Pacific Railroad in Laramie for repairing, servicing and rerouting engines. There were 14 engine bays and a singular turntable rotated by manpower. UPRR and its shops contributed greatly to the growth of Laramie.
Learn more about the Union Pacific Railroad and roundhouses.
Many towns on the western plains were built along the route of the railroad as it was constructed, but few grew to be as large and important as Laramie. It makes sense, then, that the center of the city would be the train depot.
The original depot, located in the northern area of town on 3rd Street, eventually expanded to include a hotel. When a fire swept through it, a new depot was built on Second Avenue near Garfield.
With the advent of the automobile, passenger train travel on the train diminished. Today, the depot is open to the public as a museum dedicated to those early railroad days.
Above is an early Union Pacific Railroad steam engine. Security men often stood by the train with firearms to prevent any problems from the “seedier element” and from Native Americans.
Even today, there is still a fascination with steam engines as rail fans enjoy a number of steam engines that remain in “excursion service.”
The Laramie turntable was a part of the Union Pacific Railroad (UPRR) shops built in Laramie for repairing, servicing and re-routing engines. There were 14 bays where engines could pull in for servicing. There was also a singular rotating turntable that was moved by manpower to turn the engines around.
Having UPPR repair shops in Laramie contributed greatly to the growth of the town.
Men worked in groups to lay the railroad tracks and other functions of the construction process.
The construction of the Union Pacific Railroad struggled from a shortage of workers. According to a PBS documentary, an engineer working on the construction of the railroad wrote to railroad executive Thomas Durant begging him to import workers to help saying, “It is impossible to do anything in the way of letting this work now without some provision for furnishing men.” Durant in turn asked the War Department to ship a portion of those slaves freed by the ongoing Civil War, but the government declined. Union General Grenville Dodge offered use of Indian prisoners from his winter campaign. Still, no practical solutions were forthcoming. By the end of 1865, only 40 miles of track had been laid across the inviting valley.
Learn more about a the building of the Transcontinental Railroad.
Many repair shops and roundhouses were rapidly built in Laramie during 1868 to accommodate the expanding Union Pacific Railroad line.
A roundhouse is a building used by railroads for servicing locomotives. Roundhouses are large, circular or semicircular structures that were traditionally located surrounding or adjacent to turntables.
In rail terminology, a railway turntable or wheelhouse is a device for turning railroad rolling stock, usually locomotives, so that they can be moved back in the direction from which they came.
Learn more about the building of the Transcontinental Railroad.
As the railroad expanded, windmills and water towers began dotting the landscape. Windmills provided the power to pump water from surrounding streams. The water towers then stored this water for use by the locomotives. The Laramie Windmill became so famous that visitors would come to Laramie just to see it, ignoring the nearby train stations, roundhouses and shops.
Building the railroad exposed the railroad workers to many difficult and dangerous activities in their efforts to place the tracks at the best possible locations, which had been identified in advance by teams of surveyors. Workers scaled rocks and mountains to be able to access the necessary areas, as well as to survey the land.
