Layton, Utah
I wanted to follow the northern route around the Great Salt Lake if I could, like the railroads did. That led to a 120 mile high-speed burn through some more desolate wilderness and dying towns. It did afford me the opportunity to take a fifteen minute detour into Idaho. After all, who wouldn’t want to say they’d been to Idaho?
Finally, much later than expected I arrived at the Morton-Thiokol ATK plant where they build and refurbish the Solid Rocket Boosters used on the Space Shuttle as well as all kinds of other nifty rocket engines. Nice display outside.
And, as an extra added bonus, across the street from the rocketry was the access road to Golden Spike National Historic Site. Cool! Rockets and Railroads all in one place. Sadly that one place was the middle of nowhere but you can’t have everything.
So I got to see the reconstructed Jupiter and 119: because the originals were scrapped in the early 20th century. I got to see the reconstructed tracks at Promontory Summit: because the originals were scrapped in 1942. I got to see a replica Golden Spike: because I didn’t think to see the original in Palo Alto, CA. I got to see a replica laurel tie: because the original was whittled to splinters on May 10, 1869. I DID get to see the Big Fill, the steepest grade, an original rail and some other nifty things. I didn’t get to see the reconstructed “10 Miles in One Day” sign: because the park inexplicably closed off the entire west end auto tour two months before their published closing date. Bastards. I hate the damned Park Service.
It’s a wonderful place. It is way the hell out in the middle of nowhere. Nearly thirty miles from the closest settlement. It’s so wonderful because it’s so quiet and so devoid of other human presence. If it weren’t for the two running mounds of earth the railroads built in 1868 and 1869 you’d never know that man had ever passed that way. But he did pass that way, and he left his marks in those ghostly running trails. And it’s magnificent to imagine man building across the vast and trackless plain.
And we did it first. The United States of America was the first nation on earth to span a continent with iron. And it took all of us – Yankees, Secesh, Irish, Chinese, Black, German, whatever – to do it. And that’s wonderfully American.