Every summer, from Memorial Day to Labor Day, thousands of people attend re-enactments of the completion of the transcontinental railroad at Utah’s Golden Spike National Historic Site at Promontory Summit.
The spikes they use, of course, are also re-creations. Two of the actual, ceremonial spikes from 1869, including the gold one, have been on display at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif; the third at the Museum of the City of New York.
But now, for the first time in a century and a half, the three ceremonial spikes have reunited, and they’re on tour.