President Warren G. Harding drove a golden spike into the final coupling of the Alaska Railroad more than a century ago, a ceremonial act marking the launch of a system to easily bring coal and other natural resources out of the wilderness, a few days before he died of a heart attack. The spike Harding pounded with such fanfare—weighing nearly a pound and valued at up to $50,000—has been in private hands outside the state ever since. Now, two Alaska institutions want to bring that piece of history home, the AP reports.
The Anchorage Museum, with financial backing from the Alaska Railroad, will bid on the 14-karat solid gold spike when it goes up for auction Friday in New York as part of the Christie's Important Americana collection, said Aaron Leggett, senior curator of Alaska history and Indigenous cultures. "The whole history of our state and really the whole history of this town begins with the Alaska Railroad," Leggett said of Alaska and its biggest city, Anchorage. The 5 ½-inch spike is being offered by an unidentified California resident who has owned it since 1983. The railroad, originally constructed, owned, and operated by the federal government, was sold to the state for $22 million in 1985.
The railroad was built to open the Alaska territory to development. It connected Seward, a Pacific Ocean port city, to Fairbanks, 470 miles away in interior Alaska. During the ceremony on July 15, 1923, Harding lightly tapped the golden spike twice with a maul, a hammer now behind glass at the railroad headquarters, before driving a regular spike. Shortly after, Harding began the trip back to Washington. He suffered a heart attack and died in San Francisco on Aug. 2. Since then, the spike has remained out of the public eye, except for a brief display during the 1967 centennial of the US purchase of Alaska from Russia. It's in perfect condition, said Christopher June, of Christie's, who grew up in Anchorage and remembers field trips on the Alaska Railroad as a child. "I think it definitely has a lot of interest and importance to the state," June said. "I would not be surprised at all if the eventual buyer was Alaskan."
(More
alaska stories.)
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
