President Brigham Young bought five of the original 31 shares of the Union Pacific Railroad, at $1,000 each, for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when the Union Pacific was organized in the 1860s to build a railroad westward from Council Bluffs, Iowa.
On Friday, his successor, President Russell M. Nelson, stood under a brilliant blue Utah desert sky next to the tracks where the Union Pacific and Central Pacific met 150 years ago today and called the intercontinental railroad a great achievement that proved that diverse people could transform and unite a nation.
"These hardy laborers achieved a oneness that can guide us as a people to move forward to fulfill God's plan for this nation, the world and all of his children," President Nelson said during the Golden Spike Sesquicentennial celebration.