ANCHORAGE, Alaska — (AP) — The golden spike that was used to complete the Alaska Railroad over a century ago will be on permanent display in Alaska for the first time after entities combined to win an action for the 14-karat artifact Friday.
The Anchorage Museum and the city of Nenana, with financial help from private donors and the Alaska Railroad, won the Christie’s auction for the spike in New York with a bid of $201,600, more than four times the $50,000 top-line estimate for the historical artifact. The price includes a premium of 26% for the auction company.
“We are thrilled to partner with Nenana to share this piece of history with the public,” said Julie Decker, the director and CEO of the Anchorage Museum. “The Golden Spike is a great piece of storytelling about place and people.”
The plan is for the two cities to alternate displaying the spike.
“I think it’s a neat story of an urban and a rural community both along the rail belt coming together for a worthy cause. I look forward to working together and tying our communities together once again with this same Golden Spike,” Nenana Mayor Joshua Verhagen said in a statement.
Work on the nine-year railroad construction project began in 1914, linking the Pacific Ocean port city of Seward on the south-central coast to Fairbanks, 470 miles (756 kilometers) away. It was a government infrastructure project intended to bring coal and other minerals easily out of interior Alaska.
The project’s principal engineer was U.S. Army Col. Frederick Mears, who was transferred to Seattle four months before completion. The city of Anchorage thanked him for his work by presenting him the golden spike.
He sent it back from Seattle for the ceremony featuring President Warren G. Harding.
On July 15, 1923, near Nenana, Harding lightly tapped the 5 1/2-inch (14-centimeter) spike twice, and then replaced it with a regular spike and drove it into the final coupling. Shortly after, the spike was returned to Mears in Seattle and Harding headed back to Washington but died of a fatal heart Aug. 2, 1923, in San Francisco.
The spike has remained in private hands out of Alaska since. An unidentified seller in California had owned the spike since 1983 before putting it up for auction.
Christopher June, one of the Christie’s specialists, said they were honored to handle the sale of the important part of Alaska history.
“The fact that it will be available to the people of the state, which is my home state, makes this even better,” the Anchorage native said.
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