Who Built the Railroad?

This is an archived copy of History Matters, provided by the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media. To explore this content in a new interface, visit Who Built America?.

Who Built the Railroad?

A famous photograph taken on May 10, 1869, commemorated the meeting of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads at Promontory Point, Utah, which marked the completion of the transcontinental railroad. This image was widely circulated yet is not an accurate representation of the event. This puzzle asks “What’s wrong with this photograph?”

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