Wooden chip cut from a railroad tie, Promontory, Utah, 1869

Traveling west with his mother in June 1869, eight-year-old Hart F. Farwell stopped at Promontory, Utah, to cut a chip from a special railroad tie. The previous month, on May 10, 1869, the ceremonial “Golden Spike” had been driven into the “last tie” to complete the first transcontinental rail link in the United States.

The joining of east and west by rail at Promontory was a significant event in American life and culture. A national network of iron, steel, and steam, represented by the driving of the Golden Spike, became a unifying metaphor in the years after the Civil War.

But, alas, the railroad tie from which young Farwell cut this chip was not the real “last tie.” After the driving of the Golden Spike, the ceremonial last tie was immediately removed and replaced with a pine tie no different from the others. In the weeks and months following the ceremony, relic hunters whittled replacement ties to bits at the rate of about one tie a week. The wooden chip that Farwell cut from one of these ties was his lifelong possession.

Gift of Hart F. Farwell, 1922

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