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Visitor
Center
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Films
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Ranger
Presentations
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Big
Fill Walk
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Auto
Tour
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Steam
Locomotives
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Nearby
Attractions
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Big
Fill
- As late as December, 1868, Central Pacific
surveyors planned a route that would require an
eight hundred foot tunnel to be blasted through
the east face of the Promontory Mountains. Upon
personal inspection of the proposed site, CP
President Leland Stanford overruled the ideas as
being too costly and time consuming. A new route
was surveyed that would avoid tunneling, but
could not avoid Spring Creed ravine. In
February, 1869, the Mormon construction firm of
Benson, Farr, & West, under contract to the
Central Pacific, began work on the Big Fill.
The work that followed took over two months
on intense effort by two hundred and fifty
dumpcart teams and over five hundred workers.
Day and night, load after load of fill totaling
over ten thousand cubic yards would be required
to conquer the five hundred foot span at a depth
of seventy feet.
Six months after the completion of the
Pacific railroad, Central Pacific gained control
of the line from Promontory Summit to Ogden.
Ogden then replaced Promontory as the terminus
for both railroads, and track was removed from
the Union Pacific's Big Trestle and placed on
the Big Fill.
The Big Fill has been in constant use
since becoming part of the main line. It was
first a railroad route, then after removal of
all rails in 1942, it became a rancher's access
road. Since 1965, it has been part of Golden
Spike National Historic Site. That the Big Fill
has remained usable for over 130 years and is a
lasting tribute to 1860's railroad
construction.
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