Outdoor Public Art Retells Utah’s Golden Spike Story

Golden Spike Visiting Logan, Douwe Blumberg, Artist Courtesy & Copyright Mary Heers, Photographer
Golden Spike Visiting Logan,
Douwe Blumberg, Artist
Courtesy & Copyright Mary Heers, Photographer

Locomotive Advancing within Buffalo Eye Douwe Blumberg, Artist Courtesy & Copyright Mary Heers, Photographer Locomotive Advancing In Buffalo Eye
Douwe Blumberg, Artist
Courtesy & Copyright Mary Heers, Photographer

 “Distant Thunder,”
Michael Coleman, Artist
at Golden Spike National Monument
Courtesy & Copyright Mary Heers, Photographer

Monument to their Memory, Ilan Averbuch, Artist, Golden Spike State Park at Reeder Ranch, Brigham City, UT, Photo Courtesy & Copyright Mary Heers, Photographer Monument to their Memory
Ilan Averbuch, Artist
Golden Spike State Park at Reeder Ranch, Brigham City, UT
Photo Courtesy & Copyright Mary Heers, Photographer

Early this spring, a semi-truck with a long flat bed pulled into the USU parking lot next to the cemetery and parked. Lashed down firmly on the flat bed was a giant railroad spike, covered in gold leaf and very impressive to see from a distance. But walking up to it, I could see it was covered in sculptured forms. There was an Indian astride a horse; the shaggy head of a buffalo. But what really caught my attention was the close up of the buffalo eye staring right at me. Reflected in the pupil was a steam engine, coming down the tracks, right at me. I felt the chill of the inevitable crash.

The train brought hunters with guns, hide hunters who killed and took only the hides, shipping them by the bale to industries back east. When there were no more buffalo to be shot, they collected the bones and shipped them to St Louis to be crushed into fertilizer. You could see the crash coming, and knew it would be devastating – to the buffalo and the Indians whose livelihood depended on them.

Walking around to the other side of the spike, I found a very different story. Here were the laborers who had laid down the Transcontinental tracks – the Chinese, the Irish, the Civil War veterans, the Mormon graders- Each standing proudly on the other’s shoulders, all the way to the top. I breathed in the nobility of these men for a difficult job well done.

This giant golden spike’s final home will be standing upright in a 23 acre public park in Brigham City, close enough to the Forest Street exit to be visible from I-15. Until then, we are going to have to wait to see the final two sides of the spike.

But in the meantime, there is another new art piece to go see outside the Golden Spike National Park at Promontory Point.

As I pulled into this parking lot, I was astonished to see a massive chunk of railroad track, rising up from the ground and curving slightly to a vanishing point in the sky.

I was reminded of a conversation I’d has few years ago, when I was collecting train stories, with a man who had once had a summer job hammering spikes on a railroad crew. He was fifteen- half the age and half the size of the other men. But he caught the rhythm.

Tap the spike into place. Swing in the spike maul. One, two, three. Pick up the next spike.

This story helped me understand the restless energy I felt looking at the track sculpture – one more tie, one more rail, one more spike. Repeat. These tracks were going where no tracks had gone before.

Outdoor public art can be storytelling at its very best.

And now a footnote for the engineers listening in: The giant golden spike is actually 43.2319 feet tall. That’s because 43.2319 is the square root of 1869.

This is Mary Heers and I’m Wild About Utah

Credits:

Images Courtesy & Copyright Mary Heers, Photographer
Featured Audio: Courtesy & Copyright © Friend Weller, Utah Public Radio upr.org & Cook Laboratories https://folklife.si.edu/archives-and-resources/cook-labs-records
Text: Mary Heers, https://cca.usu.edu/files/awards/art-and-mary-heers-citation.pdf
Additional Reading: Lyle Bingham, https://bridgerlandaudubon.org/

Additional Reading

Wild About Utah, Mary Heers’ Postings

Swanson, Kirsten, Heers, Mary, Ride the rails: A storytelling exploration of Utah’s early railroad, Utah Public Radio, May 18, 2022 at 9:12 AM MDT, https://www.upr.org/arts-and-culture/2019-05-10/ride-the-rails-a-storytelling-exploration-of-utahs-early-railroad

Golden Spike Monument by Douwe Blumberg, Golden Spike State Monument, The Golden Spike Foundation (GSF), https://spike150.org/park/

Driving of the Spike Tour, News, Douwe Studios, October 24, 2023, https://www.douwestudios.com/news

Hislop, Craig, Golden Spike monument coming to USU Tuesday, Cache Valley Daily, Apr 26, 2024, https://www.cachevalleydaily.com/news/golden-spike-monument-coming-to-usu-tuesday/article_ee1eb334-0376-11ef-b19c-c725f46266d9.html

Williams, Carter, Utah gets $1.5M donation as it unveils more plans for new golden spike monument, KSL.com, April 11, 2024 at 7:47 p.m. https://www.cachevalleydaily.com/news/golden-spike-monument-coming-to-usu-tuesday/article_ee1eb334-0376-11ef-b19c-c725f46266d9.html

Don’t Confuse these two places. The Golden Spike National State Park is 30 miles West of the “Gateway” Golden Spike State Monument at Reeder Ranch in Brigham City
Golden Spike National Historic Park, US National Park Service, US Department of the Interior, https://www.nps.gov/gosp/index.htm

S.C.R. 6 Concurrent Resolution Creating the Golden Spike State Monument, Utah State Legislature, Signed March 13, 2024, https://le.utah.gov/~2024/bills/static/SCR006.html

“Distant Thunder” Sculpture at Golden Spike National Historical Park Honors Bison’s Past, https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/golden-spike-national-historical-park-distant-thunder.htm

Petrified

Petrified: Shannon Woods by Petrified Wood Courtesy & © Shannon Rhodes, Photographer
Shannon Woods by Petrified Wood
Courtesy & © Shannon Rhodes, Photographer
“Charlie climbed onto the bed and tried to calm the three old people who were still petrified with fear. “Please don’t be frightened,” he said. “It’s quite safe. And we’re going to the most wonderful place in the world!”

Author Roald Dahl uses the word petrified as being motionless, stonelike, frightfully frozen, as he describes Charlie Bucket’s puzzled grandparents and his own excitement about a trip to Mr. Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. Utah’s San Rafael Swell rates as one of the most wonderful places in my world, and not because of an abundance of chocolate or gleeful oompa loompas. Beneath the towering spires on my bucket list-quest to see desert bighorn sheep in the wild, I’ve wandered among the petrified wood fragments scattered in the desert sand, so many that I almost forget to appreciate them for what they are. Petrified wood is a fascinating fossil, colorful evidence that what is now desert was once lush forest. We’ve set aside places like Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona, and Utah’s own Escalante Petrified Forest State Park boasts something like five and a half million tons of fossil wood.

When I adventure through and research Utah’s geologic history, it makes sense that the Chinle layer is a major host rock for petrified wood and uranium in the San Rafael Swell. Let’s go back in time to find out why: Over 100 million years ago, an ancient sea covered much of Utah. The San Rafael Swell was a large island where tall conifers lined its riverbanks and dinosaurs slogged through its swamps. Evidently, as understood by radiation specialist Ray Jones in a 1997 Deseret News feature titled “Hot Spot,” “Uranium isotopes dissolved in water tend to bond chemically with decaying material, like branches and logs.” Uranium prospectors in the early 1900s would follow petrified branches in the San Rafael Swell to uranium ore-bearing larger stumps buried with almost Geiger-counter precision. It’s no wonder that uranium mines dot the hills and debate continues about mineral resource rights in the area.

Petrified Wood Courtesy & © Shannon Rhodes, Photographer
Petrified Wood
Courtesy & © Shannon Rhodes, Photographer
The Greek root petro means “rock,” so petrified wood is prehistoric vegetation “turned to stone.” Permineralization is this process when minerals replaced the organic tree material when the organism was buried in water-saturated sediment or volcanic ash. Without oxygen, the logs, stumps, tree rings, knots, and even bark were preserved, giving paleobotanists clues to relationships between prehistoric plants and those we have today. According to Dr. Sidney Ash, we even find evidence of busy bark beetles in the petrified specimens in the Wolverine Petrified Wood area of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

In “Petrified Wood: Poetry Written by the Earth” released by the Myanmar Geosciences Society, I learn there are sacred shrines erected in Thailand’s petrified forests attracting visitors praying for protection. Thai legend states that touching petrified wood will give a person long life. Charles Darwin also mentioned his fascination with prehistoric plants and upright fossilized tree stumps in his naturalist journals during his expeditions, and we know he gathered and catalogued specimens. It may be bad luck, however, to move a petrified fossil from where it lies, a superstition shared by many Escalante Petrified Forest State Park visitors who have ignored the “leave only footprints, take only photographs” warnings. It seems that the park rangers receive packages from petrified offenders returning the fossil shards with apologetic notes, wishing they’d just admired the artifacts in their natural Utah settings. I’ll admit that, had I been able to lift the massive specimen I stumbled upon while I was Behind the Reef this spring, I might have been tempted to take it home. The magic for me, though, is imagining a dense forest once where cactus and rabbit brush now thrive. Whether one uses the word to mean frozen as stone from fear or geologic processes over time, and whether one is searching for uranium or a glimpse into prehistoric biomes, petrified wood is a symbol of long-lasting wonder.

I’m Shannon Rhodes, and I am wild about petrified Utah.

Credits:

Images: Courtesy & Copyright Shannon Rhodes, Photographer
Audio: Courtesy & ©
Text:     Shannon Rhodes, Edith Bowen Laboratory School, Utah State University https://edithbowen.usu.edu/
Additional Reading Links: Shannon Rhodes

Additional Reading:

Ash, Sidney. (August 2003). The Wolverine Petrified Forest. Utah Geological Survey. https://ugspub.nr.utah.gov/publications/survey_notes/snt35-3.pdf

Bartsch-Winkler, Susan, et al. (1990). Mineral Resources of the San Rafael Swell Wilderness Study Areas, including Muddy Creek, Crack Canyon, San Rafael Reef, Mexican Mountain, and Sids Mountain Wilderness Study Areas, Emery County, Utah. U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 1752. https://pubs.usgs.gov/bul/1752/report.pdf

Bauman, Joe. (Nov. 26, 1997). Hot spot. Deseret News. https://www.deseret.com/1997/11/26/19347933/hot-spot

Gordon, Greg. (2003). Landscape of Desire. Logan, Utah: University Press of Colorado. https://muse.jhu.edu/book/10431/

Hollenhorst, John. (May 26, 2014). Fossil-theft phenomenon has petrified forest visitors returning ‘keepsakes.’ KSL News. https://www.ksl.com/article/30052683/fossil-theft-phenomenon-has-petrified-forest-visitors-returning-keepsakes

Htun, Than. (March 6, 2020). P. Wood (Ingyin Kyauk): Poetry Written by the Earth. The Global New Light of Myanmar. https://www.gnlm.com.mm/petrified-wood-ingyin-kyauk-poetry-written-by-the-earth/

Mickle, D. G. et al. (1977). Uranium favorability of the San Rafael Swell Area, East-Central Utah. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/5292653

Rawson, Peter and Aguirre-Uretta, M. (2009). Charles Darwin: Geologist in Argentina. https://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Geoscientist/Archive/October-2009/Charles-Darwin-geologist-in-Argentina

Van Wyhe, John. (2002). The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online. (https://darwin-online.org.uk/) https://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?viewtype=side&itemID=NHM-408865-1001&pageseq=1

Viney, Mike. (2015). The Anatomy of Arborescent Plant Life Through Time. https://petrifiedwoodmuseum.org/PDF/AnatomyVineyRevOct2013.pdf