A (47:14)
Yeah, like, like one of the defining characteristics of gold, Right? Exactly. Is how malleable and how ductile it is. It seems like it would just like, squish. So anyway, back to the event. So this, this was on May 10, 1869, near Promontory Summit, Utah, north of Great Salt Lake. This was an event that had been years in the making. It was a major milestone in the development of the U.S. i mean, you know, hard to, hard to overstate how big a deal this was because it was joining up the Central Pacific Railway out on the west coast and the Union Pacific Railways coming out west from the east for the first time. You would in theory be able to travel all the way from coast to coast by rail in a matter of days. Right. So before, before the railroad was completed, you know, you could travel cross country by wagon in like six months. If you wanted to get out to, out to San Francisco from the east coast or stagecoach, if you're lucky, maybe, maybe a little over three weeks, you could do it. And after the railroad was completed, the goal was under two weeks. And if you could afford it, the, the high class first class travel the whole way, you know, as, as short as five days. So this is huge. So like it opened up economy and trade and exploration. This was a huge event. Like people were waiting to hear about this. There was a telegraph station set up there to capture this event. Just ready, literally ready to let the rest of the country know the moment that it was completed. Like, like just hanging on, hanging on every moment. The story of this day has a lot, it's like, it's almost like one of these, like microcosm of, you know, American history in a way. I mean you've got like the wealthy industrialists, the robber barons, the railroads. You've got almost exclusively immigrant crews of workers building the rails. Yeah, I mean to be very clear, back breaking labor, the crew working out from California east was overwhelmingly Chinese workers. The crews working west out from Nebraska area were overwhelmingly Irish. And you know, of course it had a lot of negative impacts too on a lot of the native peoples who lived out in the area where they were building these railroad tracks. Snapshot of what, of what it meant to be an American at that time. So I've heard this story before, at least the broad strokes, the golden spike, the hammer, all this. The other part of the story that always stuck with me is that as I heard this story, the last spike, you know, hammered in here was driven by, by none other than Leland Stanford himself. So Leland Stanford, among, among other things, was a very wealthy industrialist. He was the eighth governor of California. Importantly, as it relates to this story, he was a big wig executive of the Central Pacific Railway. He also, of course Karen, as you, as you know, along with his wife Jane, established a well known university here in the Bay Area. Strictly speaking, Stanford University is not named after Leland Stanford himself, but after their son Leland Stanford Jr. Died at 15 from typhoid, they wanted to name the university in a way of honoring him. Yeah, as a Cal bear, as Karen and I are, it's our rival school. All right, the golden spike. Okay. Stanford, he was given the honor of driving the last spike because he was, you know, very instrumental in making it happen. He was to be provided with indeed a silver hammer. Oh, a silver hammer to drive in this spike. And now when I say hammer, it's not your toolbox hammer. There's a very specific hammer used in driving railroad spikes. It's called a spike maul. M A U L. Yeah, great Star wars character name. Spike Maul. Yeah. Maybe Darth Maul's cousin from, you know, outside Needles. A spike, a spike mall has is a hammer with A pretty long handle and a very elongated business and hammer and the steel end of it.
