A year ago thousands of people gathered in Promontory where the final spikes were hammered into the ground 150 years ago to mark the finish of the nearly 1,800-mile rail line, triggering a famous telegraph that set off celebrations around the nation.

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Max Chang was born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah and is considered one of the first, if not first, Taiwanese Americans born in Utah.  Max is a Board Member of the Spike 150 Foundation which oversaw the sesquicentennial celebration of the completion of the nation’s first transcontinental railroad.

A president can get a lot done in Washington when a slew of congressmen — the ones who hate his guts — skip town for four years. In 1862 alone, between the blood baths at Shiloh in April and Antietam in September, President Abraham Lincoln abolished slavery in the District of Columbia, created the indispensable Department of Agriculture — “the people’s department,” the former boy bumpkin called it — and signed into law a series of westward-facing bills that the secessionist quitters would have never O.K.’d, including the Homestead Act on May 20 and the Pacific Railway Act on July 1.

The first Transcontinental Railroad, completed in 1869, joined two railroads to connect the east and west coasts of the United States for the first time. It was a feat of engineering that meant that a dangerous journey that once took months could now be completed in a week. As you will read in this article, one scholar calls the feat “every bit as consequential as the digital revolution that binds the world” today.

Today — at the 150th anniversary of the Golden Spike Ceremony marking the completion of the transcontinental railroad — is a day to commemorate the achievement of the railroads and railroad workers who risked everything to make the Transcontinental Railroad a reality. The Transcontinental Railroad was a tremendous feat of engineering, innovation, and manpower that was key to unleashing the economic prosperity of the United States for generations. Within three years of its completion, trains could travel from New York City to San Francisco in just one week. Prior to that, travelers endured up to 6 months or more of dangerous travel by ship or covered wagon to cross the continent.

Relive the completion of the transcontinental railroad at Promontory Summit at the Spike 150 celebration at the Golden Spike National Historical Park on May 10, 2019, where Utah and national leaders gathered to remember the people who contributed to the historic feat.

With replicas of historic steam locomotives whistling across north Utah on Friday, thousands of people came here to celebrate the 150th birthday of the first U.S. transcontinental railroad while honoring the Chinese workers who helped build it.

Irish immigrants have been remembered at an event in the US state of Utah celebrating the 150th anniversary of the ‘Golden Spike’, the moment when the First Transcontinental Railroad was completed.

“Dot, Dot, Dot. Done!” That message, sent 150 years ago Friday by telegrapher W.N. Shilling from Promontory Summit, Utah, set off celebrations as the driving of the Golden Spike completed the Transcontinental Railroad.

Classrooms made a field trip out of it, train buffs traveled from afar and a contingent of Chinese Americans from California came to pay their respects.

Music, bells and cannon fire rang out Friday at a remote spot in the Utah desert where the final spikes of the Transcontinental Railroad were hammered 150 years ago, uniting a nation long separated by vast expanses of desert, mountains and forests and fresh off the Civil War.

Connie Young Yu says that when her parents joined a delegation of fellow Chinese-Americans attending a 1969 event commemorating the centennial of the first U.S. Transcontinental Railroad, they were snubbed, upstaged by Hollywood star John Wayne.

Students in Kayse Fernandes’s fourth-grade class used to ignore the railroad tracks that run next to the freeway and along the outskirts of their city. If they did think about them, they figured they were just an old-fashioned way to get from one place to another.

Union Pacific’s rails don’t go up to Promontory anymore, which is why you get the early celebration in Ogden. Organizers say the trains meeting today should be a reminder of how the railroad brought our country together, in more ways than one.

One hundred and fifty years after the transcontinental railroad completion, Gov. Gary Herbert signed a bill that made a commemorative 10-ounce copper spike Utah’s official spike. The spike, designed by O.C. Tanner using copper from Utah’s Rio Tinto mines, was unveiled Wednesday evening during a private unveiling at O.C. Tanner Jewelers.

When Richard Chang got a call from his agent offering him a voiceover role in Bill Moyers’ docu-series “Becoming American: The Chinese Experience,” he didn’t expect much to come out of it. However, as he read the part of Wong Chin Foo, he was “just amazed at all the history that most people don’t know about,” he told the Deseret News in a phone interview.

Completing the transcontinental railroad 150 years ago at Promontory Summit forever changed Utah and the nation — driving radical transformation in everything from the economy to the environment, from settlement to the culture.

Experience the splendor of Aaron Copland‘s American masterpieces-the suite from the ballet “Billy the Kid” and Pulitzer Prize-winning “Appalachian Spring” on May 17 at 7:30 PM and May 18 at 5:30 PM in Abravanel Hall. The night also features the Utah premiere of “Transcend” from Chinese-American Zhou Tian in celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Golden Spike as well as violinist James Ehnes, one of the most dynamic and exciting performers in classical music, performing Bruch’s beautiful Violin Concerto.