When the coast-to-coast telegraph was completed in Salt Lake City in October 1861, Brigham Young sent a clear signal to President Abraham Lincoln: “Utah has not seceded but is firm for the Constitution and laws of our once happy country.” Less than eight years later, on May 10, 1869, hundreds gathered at Promontory, Utah, to witness another coast-to-coast completion. The driving of the last spike of the transcontinental railroad reverberated continuity to a once broken nation.1
