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Oral History |
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By Pappy Clay - February 15th, 1969 This is the memory story of an old resident of Promontory Station, Utah, where the "Wedding of the Rails" was celebrated May 10th, 1869, who arrived on that scene a mere fifteen years after the event, and who lived in or near Promontory Station for many of those early years of Central Pacific history. Several of the officials responsible for the Golden Spike Celebration of 1969 have suggested this story as a description of what life at Promontory Station was like during the last third of the Eighteenth century. Here are recorded some of the remembered observations and experiences of the writer of that long ago time and place. In 1884 Promontory Station was not too much different that it had been in 1870. The old type "diamond stack coal burners" were still almost identical with the "Jupiter" of 1869 and there were many of them, with their shrill whistling and their clanging bell, always switching around in the Promontory yards. Promontory Station was still a wild and woolly frontier railroad camp where early Mormon settlers from along the east side of Promontory peninsula rode or drove up the hill to trade or leave by train and while there they mingled with many Chinese and other railroad employees and often stayed over to watch the trains go by. Promontory was the coaling base for a breed of locomotive helper engines locally called "hogs" and the residences of their maintainers and operators, among whom the writer remembers, were Jim Donagay, Tom Murphy, Bob Toy, Fatty Freeman and others including a "Mr. Frick" who hogheaded the Promontory Gravel train. Promontory was railroad eating house stopover for countless succession of overland emigrants. It was a noisy, smokey transfer point with the puffing of engines, the clanging of bells, the shouting of switchmen, the waving of kerosene lantern at night, the smell of hot cylinder oil, and a 24 hour bedlam of sounds. It was a cheerful place where man felt they were doing important work, yet in a way, it was a momentous, lonesome place. It was a very dry, windy, dusty place situated in the middle of a narrow sagebrush plateau which constitutes a high divide in the Promontory range. It was in rattlesnake country with jackrabbits, badgers, prairie dogs, lizards and horny toads living on and in the ground and crows and hawks circling the skies. The nearby hills were the home of nightly howling coyotes. It was a near "run" for wild mustangs and close to a round up center for cowboys herding wild range cattle. In 1869 Promontory Station was in Utah territory which ten years earlier had been the "State Deseret" and 25 years still earlier had been a territory of Old Mexico, and 25,000 years before that it's location would have been part of the bottom of Old Lake Bonneville and under 400 feet of fresh water. Promontory Station consisted largely of numerous switching sidetracks and transfer and storage yards for freight cars and had large coal storage sheds, bins and chutes. The elevated water tank in the yards was for emergency use only and was little used since the water in it had been shipped in from far away Bear River River at Corinne which was an uphill haul of 26 miles. Promontory was the driest station between Ogden and Terrace. The telegraph office and depot and Railroad Eating house were all strung out and joined very close to the mainline approximately where the Golden Spike had been driven and minutely located by the original railroad surveyors. They were south of the track on the side where the New Railroad Museum now stands an were painted a brownish yellow color. Most of the railroad employee's residences or company houses as then called, were on the other side of the main line and further west. They were painted a brownish red. There was a school house which was small and unpainted on the north side of the tracks back from them and further east and it had a bell in the belfry on it's roof. Two general stores and a saloon were well back from the tracks on the south side and which location would be now behind the Railroad museum. There was a sizable roundhouse and heavy turntable in the yards near the coal sheds west of the Depot. East of the station some distance of the main line was a railroad Y pointing to the south, for turning engines and other railroad rolling stock around on, and in early days it was used by the "Hogs" more than the turntable since and engine turned itself around by running up the leg of the Y before going to the coal sheds in the Promontory yards. What was life like in the Golden Spike Era in old camp Promontory? It meant knowing only paraffin candles and kerosene lamps and cast iron cook stoves. It meant carrying all water needed to a company house in a tin water pail from a water car in the yards. It meant getting a box of groceries once a week from Ogden freight free and paying double for all in-between supplies bought at Tom Brown's store. It meant hand twirling a can of sweetened milk in a wooden tub full salted ice once or twice each summer to get a taste of homemade ice cream. It meant playing "high five" by kerosene lamp light well into the night for entertainment unless there might be a dance in the schoolhouse. It meant most everyday and night was similar to every other day and night in a dusty world of noisy monotony. Yet life and it's meaning had come to a more sane conclusion than is now possible among the more numerous temptations and distractions of today. It has taken this writer 70 years to realize how lucky a boy was to be born in that Golden Spike Era and witnessed the pageant of life from the tallow candle to the neon-tube, and from wood burner with diamond stack to the diesel-electric with invisible exhaust. More change took place in that 70 years than in the previous 2,000 years and amid a more wholesome and character building environment than is the lot of the generation of 1969. All in all this writer has more praise than complaint for that long ago "Golden Spike Era". |
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