May 10, 1869

First transcontinental railroad

Central Pacific and Union Pacific rails joined at Promontory Summit

Both railroad executives missed the ordinary last spike. A worker finished the job while the telegrapher sent “D-O-N-E.”

12:47 p.m., 10 May 1869

At Promontory Summit in Utah Territory — not Promontory Point, about 35 miles away — representatives and workers of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific joined their tracks on 10 May 1869. Central Pacific rails had reached the spot on 30 April and Union Pacific's on 9 May.

Four precious-metal ceremonial spikes were tapped into a polished laurel tie. Leland Stanford and Thomas Durant both missed their swings at the ordinary iron spike that followed, but Western Union telegrapher W. N. Shilling transmitted “D-O-N-E” at 12:47 p.m.

The gold went straight back out of the track

The ceremonial spikes and the laurel tie were removed immediately afterward, and a worker drove an ordinary iron final spike into a pine tie. No gold spike carried regular trains.

Union Pacific locomotive No. 119 and Central Pacific's Jupiter were then brought nearly nose to nose for the celebration and the photographs — which means the famous picture is a staged scene, not the instant the last spike went in.

Who laid the last rail

Eight Chinese workers moved the final rail into position that morning, and a Chinese contingent was among the crowd of perhaps a thousand, though surviving attendance accounts vary widely. The ceremony itself had slipped from 8 May after unpaid tie cutters detained Durant's train.

The 1,776 miles joined at Promontory ran from Sacramento to Omaha, not shore to shore. The Bay Area extension was finished later in 1869, and the Omaha–Council Bluffs rail bridge opened in 1872.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 8 sources 2 audit passes

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet, rewritten from that sheet, then audited against it by a different model. How the pipeline works →

What the sources leave uncertain

The event date and place are secure. Estimates of attendance range from roughly 300 to 1,500; the National Park Service’s historical synthesis uses about 1,000.