Golden Spike National Historic Park

July 5, 2023

The park is only there because it is where the last spike was driven to join the rails from competing railroad companies coming from Sacramento and Omaha. The actual golden spike is in a museum in California and the tracks were torn out during WWII, so the park installed about 2 miles of track and they have a couple replica steam engines. I watched one of the steam engines arrive which was loudly blowing its whistle. There are two driving tours, east and west on gravel roads. Skip the west, nothing interesting. The east is nice with a few pullouts that have informational markers including an arched rock named Chinese Arch. The only hike in the park is a short 1.5 mile loop that takes you along a path where the tracks used to be. The landscape is kind of barren with rocks, sagebrush and a few sunflowers. I saw a couple rabbits and about a million grasshoppers. The only people I saw along the trail were two treasure hunters looking for the Utah Treasure (promo done in Utah annually).