Joining the Continent! With a Golden Spike!

Golden Spike

In 1869, the Golden Spike symbolically sealed the Transcontinental Rail-road, joining the Union Pacific and Central Pacific rail-roads at Promontory Summit in the Utah Territory.  The golden spike was driven into a pre-drilled hole in a specially cut tie of California laurel with a silver spike maul,the other three spikes were also ceremonial:

• A (lower quality) golden spike donated by the San Francisco News Ledger.
• The state of Nevada gave a spike of unpolished silver, which was forged not cast.
• Arizona territory provide a spike of iron, silver and gold.

This sounds like some serious ritual components for some sort of industrial magic ceremony to me.  Perhaps something designed to give the rail-road long term dominance over the West, but it went wrong as it was suppose to take place on the 8th but was delayed by a labor dispute . . . How is that for irony?

Or perhaps time travelling thieves are planning to steal this historical artefact and the Time Patrol / Super Heroes / Western Heroes (or all together) must stop them.  Or in the modern day, someone is trying to gather all four of the original spikes and a new laurel tie for nefarious (ritual?) purposes.

Just some random thoughts and ideas tied to this historic anniversary.  Have a great day all.

Notes: Photo by Neil916 from wikipedia used under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.  More information on the Golden Spike can be found at wikipedia.