Story of the Golden Spike at Lang Station. By GERALD M. BEST.
From the Golden Spike Centennial Souvenir Program Sept. 5, 1976.
[Centennial Index][Story of the Golden Spike][The Chinese
Contribution] Story of the Golden Spike at Lang Station
Condensed from a forthcoming book by Gerald M. Best, noted
railroad historian. Beginning of the Rails Railroad fever
gripped the nation through the first half of the nineteenth
century. A new world had been born. For the first time in the
long history of mankind, he and his goods could be transported
across land a speed faster than a galloping horse. People could
now move over great distances in comfort; goods could be moved
in quantity over those same distances. Communities competed
wildly for rail service; the men who laid the rails held the
reins of political and economic power. For a while it appeared
that the railroad, moving south from San Francisco toward the
Colorado river, would bypass the farming town of Los Angeles,
"Queen of the Cow Counties." This tiny engine,