You may (or may not) remember that Leland Stanford marked completion of the first transcontinental railroad on May 10, 1869, by driving a 17.6-karat gold spike into the last rail joining the Central Pacific and Union Pacific at Promontory Summit, Utah Territory.
What you most likely won't remember is that little more than six months later, on Nov. 26, 1869, Chariton's Smith H. Mallory and another contractor, surname Wolf, Wolff or Wolfe, drove a spike some 12 miles east of Glenwood in Mills County that joined the final stretches of the Burlington & Missouri River Railroad across southern Iowa. This was more of a budget operation. The spike was silver.
Construction of the B. & M. R. Railroad had begun at Burlington during 1853, but was stalled at Ottumwa by the Civil War. After the war, construction resumed and the rails reached Chariton during July of 1867. Two years later, the line across the south of Iowa was complete.
Chariton's Mallory, bridge contractor on the road west from Chariton to the Missouri, had recently been awarded a contract to extend the line from Plattsmouth, Nebraska, to Lincoln. He began building east from the Missouri River through Glenwood during the summer of 1869. The other contractor had commenced at Afton and built west through Creston, Corning and Red Oak.
Here's how The Glenwood Opinion reported the big day in its edition of Saturday, Nov. 27:
The Last Spike Driven!!
The B. & M. R. Railroad Completed to Glenwood and the Missouri River
Glenwood Out of the Wilderness
It is here. The first passenger train over the B. & M. Road arrived in Glenwood yesterday (Friday) at about 2 o'clock p.m. In the morning the word came that connection would be made and the last rail laid about noon, and some two or three hundred of our citizens, and the Glenwood Cornet Band, with a number from Plattsmouth and Council Bluffs, jumped aboard the construction train and went out to the junction, about twelve miles east of this place. The workmen were just laying the last rail in its place. A telegraph operator had tapped the wires, and was ready to send the joyful news.
In about an hour, the train from Burlington, consisting of two passenger cars, in which were Supt. Perkins, Engineer Douglas and other officers of the road, with a large number of citizens from Burlington and intermediate points, came up.
When everything was in readiness, Contractors Wolf and Mallory drove the last spike to its place, and three rousing cheers, music by the band, and the screech of the locomotives announced the final completion of the great enterprise.
A number of citizens, including the band, were then tendered seats in the company's elegant drawing room coach and in less than an hour, the first passenger train steamed into Glenwood. At the depot, the train was met by a large crowd of citizens, who escorted the excursionists to the hotel, where an ample repast had been prepared for them by our citizens. The excursionists then proceeded to Council Bluffs.
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Actually, the excursionists proceeded to Plattsmouth that evening where they remained overnight before continuing to Council Bluffs then beginning the return trip to Burlington. The Missouri River would not be bridged permanently from Mills County to Plattsmouth until 1879, but a temporary pile bridge had been completed to allow the crossing.
Rail cars full of Red Oak residents had set out that morning to witness the ceremony, too, but got stalled behind a gravel train and missed the excitement. Undeterred, however, they continued on to the river after the gravel cars moved onto a siding, then turned around and arrived in Glenwood in time to join the celebration there.
Not all had gone exactly as planned during the ceremony either, as this paragraph from The Opinion of Dec. 4 suggests:
Last Friday, while Messrs. Wolf and Mallory were driving the silver spike on the last rail of our road, a special correspondent of the Chicago Post, who was on the ground, wrote and sent a dispatch to his paper that "two sturdy sons of the Emerald Isle" were driving home the last spike in the last rail, &c. He must have been laboring under considerable excitement not to detect the difference between the regular, sure stroke of the genuine "son of Erin" and the irregular blows and frequent misses of the gentlemen referred to. Mallory missed the spike once and Wolf twice and both are native born American citizens.
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John V. Faith carried the following report, giving a little more railroad history, in his Nov. 30 edition of The Chariton Democrat:
It is some fifteen years since the first rail was laid in the construction of the Burlington & Missouri River railroad, and the "last spike" was driven at noon of last Friday, the 26th inst. The progress of the road, from its commencement, has been marked by that indomitable perseverance which only can overcome difficulties and surmount obstacles. Its progress was very slow, at first, but it was extended as rapidly as the developments of the country would warrant, and now we are in direct and uninterrupted communication with New York, San Francisco, and the rest of the world.
The ceremony of laying the last rail was attended by the officers of the road and a large number of invited guests. Track-laying at the other end of the road was commenced about first of October, and the work was hastened by the parties having it in charge. Our fellow townsman, Mr. S.H. Mallory, had charge, we believe, of the work at the west end of the road, and Mr. Wolff laid the track from Afton west, the two parties meeting at West Nisnabotnay.
These two gentleman swung the sledges that drove the silvered spike and the first train over the B. & M. R. railroad proceeded on its way to the Missouri River. The occasion was one for earnest congratulation among those who were present, in which we are sure the people along the line will join them.
The track will require some little ballasting and leveling up before trains can run regularly, but it is thought that by the middle of December daily trains will be running regularly to Council Bluffs.
The B. & M. is one of the best and most substantially constructed roads in the state, but it is not any better than the country through which it passes will require. There is no part of Iowa that is more fertile in its agricultural and mineral productions than that through which this road passes. When we shall have attained that population to which we are entitled, and when the projected "feeding" roads shall have been constructed through Nebraska, we shall witness such a business by this road as seldom falls to the lot of one railroad through a new country.
The B. & M. is being extended through Nebraska, and will be completed to Lincoln in a few months. At a distance of about 100 miles from that pace it will intersect the Union Pacific, and then a large share of the travel between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts will pass over the road. The completion of the B. & M. railroad is an event of no small importance to Iowa and the business world, and the officers and contractors are entitled to much commendation for the persistency with which they have prosecuted the great work.
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The small elephant in the room at the time both the transcontinental route and the Burlington & Missouri River Railroad route were completed is the fact that the Missouri River had not yet been permanently bridged. That situation was rectified with the opening of the Union Pacific bridge joining Council Bluffs and Omaha on March 17, 1872, and the Burlington & Missouri River bridge joining Mills County and Plattsmouth during 1879.
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