Golden Spike National Park

On Sunday I took a trip to the past.  I was out looking for Golden Eagles in the area north of the Great Salt Lake and ended up at Golden Spike NP.  Yep, the location where the Union Pacific Railroad and The Central Pacific Railroad met in 1869.  Very Neat... As I was driving up, I was wondering where the railroad was, but found out later that a short-cut across the north end of the lake made this path obsolete (plus it was difficult through the mountains), so in the early stages of WWII, the rails were pulled up and re-used elsewhere.  If you followed my pictures last fall, here's a picture of the line across the lake (Link to 23 Oct 11)

The meeting point:  in the center of this picture, between the dark oil spots, you can see where there's a extra rail commemorating the junction.  Every May they do a re-enactment of the meeting and during the summer have steam locomotives running on the bit of rail left.

There was both a driving tour and a walking tour of the old railroad bed.  Interesting that the companies both continued grading right past each other, since the location had not been set.  In some cases, it the beds were within 100 yds of each other!  This picture is taken from the Central Pacific's bed across the 'Big Fill', a stream bed that needed crossing.  The Central Pacific filled in the bed (along right side of picture), while the Union Pacific built a wood tressel.  Only the abutments remain of the UP's line (seen at left of picture).  There are three cuts through the rock, the middle one was abandoned as undoable.

After wandering through history, I then went hunting other birds, although not very successfully, but got this nice shot of heron and mtns...

So, now you are probably saying, did you ever see the Golden Eagle?  Yep, I did, but he flew off just as I got the camera on him, so it's not the best, sorry: