<P> The major investor in the Union Pacific was Thomas Clark Durant, who had made his stake money by smuggling Confederate cotton with the aid of Grenville M. Dodge . Durant chose routes that would favor places where he held land, and he announced connections to other lines at times that suited his share dealings . He paid an associate to submit the construction bid to another company he controlled, Crédit Mobilier, manipulating the finances and government subsidies and making himself another fortune . Durant hired Dodge as chief engineer and Jack Casement as construction boss . </P> <P> In the East, the progress started in Omaha, Nebraska, by the Union Pacific Railroad which initially proceeded very quickly because of the open terrain of the Great Plains . This changed, however, as the work entered Indian - held lands . The Native Americans saw the railroad as a violation of their treaties with the United States . War parties began to raid the moving labor camps that followed the progress of the line . Union Pacific responded by increasing security and hiring marksmen to kill American Bison, which were both a physical threat to trains and the primary food source for many of the Plains Indians . The Native Americans then began killing laborers when they realized that the so - called "Iron Horse" threatened their existence . Security measures were further strengthened, and progress on the railroad continued . </P> <P> Six years after the groundbreaking, laborers of the Central Pacific Railroad from the west and the Union Pacific Railroad from the east met at Promontory Summit, Utah Territory . It was here on May 10, 1869, that Leland Stanford drove The Last Spike (or golden spike) that joined the rails of the transcontinental railroad . The spike is now on display at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, while a second "Last" Golden Spike is also on display at the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento . In perhaps the world's first live mass - media event, the hammers and spike were wired to the telegraph line so that each hammer stroke would be heard as a click at telegraph stations nationwide--the hammer strokes were missed, so the clicks were sent by the telegraph operator . As soon as the ceremonial "Last Spike" had been replaced by an ordinary iron spike, a message was transmitted to both the East Coast and West Coast that simply read, "DONE ." Travel from coast to coast was reduced from six months or more to just one week . </P> <P> When the last spike was driven, the rail network was not yet connected to the Atlantic or Pacific but merely connected Omaha to Sacramento . To get from Sacramento to the Pacific, the Central Pacific purchased the struggling Western Pacific Railroad (unrelated to the railroad of the same name that would later parallel its route) and resumed construction on it, which had halted in 1866 due to funding troubles . In November 1869, the Central Pacific finally connected Sacramento to the east side of San Francisco Bay by rail at Oakland, California, where freight and passengers completed their transcontinental link to the city by ferry . </P>

When did the east and west railroads meet