Thomas G. Alexander Utah, The Right Place After Utah's community
leaders had convinced the Central and Union Pacific Railroads to
build their stations and shops in Ogden rather than Corinne, the
railroaders laid the track that spliced the capital and main
business center at Salt Lake City into the transcontinental
lines. Seven days after the joining of the rails at Promontory
Summit, Brigham Young and a group of other community leaders
broke ground for the Utah Central Railroad. After eight months
of construction, on January 10, 1870, Young drove the last
spike, made of Utah iron rather than of gold, and Wilford
Woodruff offered the dedicatory prayer, completing the railroad
link between Salt Lake and Ogden. Central Pacific Railroad,
construction at Victory Camp, 1869 Utahns then laid ribbons of
track that eventually unrolled through the rapidly urbanizing
Wasatch Front and into the maturing mining districts. Like lava
streaming outward from the central flow, railroads branched out
from the Utah Southern to t