Party Time!! in Utah

When the Central Pacific Railroad was building its part of the Transcontinental Railroad, it was going through Utah when it met the Union Pacific coming from the other direction. You may be familiar with a rather large lake in northern Utah, the Great Salt Lake. In order to go through Utah economically and quickly, both railroads went north around the lake and they met at Promontory, Utah straight north of the middle of the lake. This is where the Golden Spike was driven into the railroad tie to symbolize the completion of the transcontinental railroad. A telegraph message was sent at 12:47 PM on May 10, 1869 "Done".

You may recongize the picture on this post card. It is only a replica. This post card has a copyright of 1999 on it. This route through Utah was used to get across The United States of America for 35 years. It was used even before Utah became the 45th state on January 4, 1896. The Central Pacific Railroad was eventually leased to the Southern Pacific Railroad starting on April 1, 1885. The Southern Pacific (Willaim Hood, Chief Engineer and Edward Harriman, CEO) decided to go straight across the lake and by-pass several dangerous curves and steep grades as well as 43 miles of travel. The shortcut, known as the Lucin Cut-off, runs between Ogden, Utah on the east side and Lucin. It was built between February, 1902 and March, 1904. The first pilings were set into the lake in August of 1902 and the last pile was driven on October 26, 1903. The cut-off was a combination of a rock-filled causeway and a 12 mile long wooden trestle. It cost $4,000,000 to build.

This post card was mailed on Jan 18, 1907. It is a commemoration of the ceremony to open the Lucin Cut-off. The top left picture is a shot from on the trestle looking across the lake. The large picture is the gathering of the required dignitaries (Misters Hood and Harriman, not doubt are in there) to make the opening official. The bottom left is a profile view of the 12 mile long trestle. And the bottom right is of 4 people floating in the Great Salt Lake. Like the Dead Sea, the minerals make the water so dense that people can easily float on the water. In the middle of the trestle was the aptly named "Mid-Lake Station". Midlake began when trestle construction started in 1902. Temporary camps for the workers were built at intervals along the trestle, and one of them, Camp 23, was located at the later site of Midlake. While the other camps disappeared with the completion of the trestle, Camp 23, renamed Midlake, remained as a train order station and maintenance of way facility. It closed in 1945 when the Southern Pacific changed over to cenralized trafic control from the semaphore-block style traffic control. Imagine growing up in the middle of the lake. That is what this next post card is showing to us. The square picture is a picture of Mid-Lake, Utah.

These previous two post cards were published by The Albertype Company of Brooklyn, NY. The top card is from the pre-March 1, 1907 era and this one is from shortly thereafter. The back contains the reminders on the right side of the card: "This space is for the Address only" and on the left side: "This space may be used for Correspondence" The Southern Pacific continued to use this right of way until into the early 1960s. The trestle may have been near the end of its life as a trestle as the 1960s started, but its story had just begun. The 1960s through the early 1990s brought over thirty years of well-deserved rest from the heavy train traffic of its almost 60 years of service. Nature was not so kind. The wind and the waves accompanying the intermittent fierce storms on the Great Salt Lake began to take their toll on the trestle, which was no longer being maintained as it had been when it was the railroad's only means of crossing the lake. Piece by piece, handrail and deck materials were broken free and blown or washed into the lake. In not too many years, the trestle was no longer fit to be even a back-up means of crossing the lake.

This post card is also from the pre-March 1, 1907 era and was printed by the Albertype Company. All three of these cards are on very good quality card stock and have not lost any of their strength, rigidity or stiffness over the past century - WOW!! that is a long time. "The trestle was given new life in the early 1990s. In March of 1993, Cannon Structures, Inc. obtained salvage rights to the trestle from T.C. Taylor Co., Ltd., which had previously acquired these rights from Southern Pacific. Cannon soon thereafter established its Trestlewood Division, through which it has been salvaging, remanufacturing and marketing the wood from the trestle ever since." (from Trestlewood.com website)