PROMONTORY'S LAST PASSENGER CAR

摘要

THIS MAY MARKS the sesquicentennial of the completion of the Pacific Railroad. The familiar photographs of the ceremony at Promontory Summit, Utah, on May 10, 1869, will be republished and restudied, and the gold and silver spikes used at the "wedding of the rails" will be featured in fresh exhibits. Writers and speakers will tell the story to a new generation and will perhaps assess the significance of the 150-year-old event in a new light. However, there is little, if anything, left to discover. And yet one witness to that event has survived the passing years with little notice or appreciation. Indeed, few even know that the former Central Pacific business car, the car that carried railroad President Leland Stanford, friends, and the gold and silver spikes to and from that event, still survives.