The TRAVELER'S JOURNAL: May tenth, remembering when East and West came together.

"Two engines facing on the single track. Half a world behind each back." Bret Harte penned that bit of doggerel on this day in 1869 at Promontory Summit, Utah a wind-whipped desert plateau 90 miles northwest of Salt Lake City. That's when and where track crews of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads met. It marked the milestone of completion to what many regard as the most ambitious railroad construction project ever, as chronicled in Steven Abrose's best-selling history, Nothing Like It in the World.

Racing each other to amass the most miles to their undefined meeting point, the two road gangs had pushed rail lines over 1700 miles of high mountain, scorching desert and barren prairie. Few people thought the project could be accomplished in a decade, yet profit proved a powerful incentive. Just four years after work crews started out from Omaha and Sacramento, Leyland Stanford, Central Pacific's president, tapped the ceremonial solid gold spike into a polished laurel wood tie.

History captured the event in a photo of Grenville Dodge and Samuel Montigue, chief engineers for the two lines, shaking hands amid legions of cohorts. As the two engines, the Jupiter and old 119, moved together until their cow catchers kissed, trans-continental travel and the American west were changed forever.

The event put Promontory Summit on the map. To celebrate the today's anniversary, costumed members of the local Golden Spike Association perform their annual recreation at the National Park Service Museum. Thousand of rail buffs make the pilgrimage.

FMI For info on Golden National Spike Historical Site or www.nps.gov/gosp or call 453- 471-2209

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