The Golden Spike used to symbolically finish construction of the Alaska Railroad in 2023 is seen in this undated photo. President Warren Harding hammered the spike in a ceremony in Nenana. (Photo provided by Anchorage Museum)
A glittering piece of Alaska history is returning to the state after it made its first appearance more than a century ago.
The “Golden Spike” used as the final connection that symbolically completed the Alaska Railroad is now back in Alaska hands, thanks to a successful bid at the auction house Christie’s, the Anchorage Museum and City of Nenana announced on Friday.
The spike was hammered by President Warren Harding at a ceremony in Nenana on July 15, 1923. The purchase price for the 24-karat gold piece, which is 5.5 inches long and weighs about a pound, was $201,600, and the sale closed on Friday, according to the listing on Christie’s website.
A variety of private donors supplied money for the purchase, the museum and city of Nenana said in their statement.
Now that it is returning to Alaska, the spike will be displayed in turn by the Anchorage Museum and the city of Nenana.
“We are thrilled to partner with Nenana to share this piece of history with the public,” Julie Decker, director and chief executive officer of the Anchorage Museum, said in the statement. “The Golden Spike is a great piece of storytelling about place and people.”
A schedule has yet to be set, said museum spokeswoman Janet Asaro.
The spike spent little time in Alaska, or in public view anywhere, after it was used in the ceremony.
The city of Anchorage, itself a product of the railroad’s construction, officially bestowed the Golden Spike to U.S. Army Col. Frederick Mears, one of the chief engineers overseeing the project. Anchorage at the time had been newly formed out of a railroad construction tent city named for its geographic location, Ship Creek, a waterway that flows into Cook Inlet.
Mears, in turn, lent the Golden Spike to Alaska’s territorial governor for use in the ceremony at Nenana.
The Christie’s listing includes an excerpt from the New York Times’ report on the event. It took Harding three times to drive the spike in correctly, as he missed completely on the first two tries, the Times reported.
After it was used in the Nenana ceremony, the spike was exhibited temporarily at a museum in Juneau before being returned to Mears. Much later, it was featured briefly in other Alaska exhibits, in Fairbanks in 1967 and Anchorage in 2001, according to the museum.
Harding was the first president to visit Alaska – and the only sitting president to ever drive a railroad spike, according to the museum. His expedition was a big event, with destinations that included the Resurrection Bay port city of Seward, Interior Alaska sites and Valdez.
While the Golden Spike is one legacy of that Alaska trip, there are others.
The Kenai Peninsula’s Harding Icefield, the largest icefield located entirely in the United States, was named for the president after he visited Seward. The city is the southern terminus of the Alaska Railroad.
In the small town of Talkeetna, one of Harding’s last stops, there is a persistent local legend about the former president. He got a meal and a haircut at the Fairview Inn, but he died days later, after he returned to the Lower 48. According to the legend — which is unsubstantiated but grew out of contemporary accusations and remains a popular topic of conversation in Talkeetna — Harding’s wife slipped poison into the meal because she was fed up with the president’s persistent philandering.
The Fairview Inn, now on the National Register of Historic Places, has an extensive display of Harding memorabilia that was assembled by Cortni Ruth, a longtime bartender. The display includes images of the Golden Spike ceremony — plus a lot of documentation of Harding’s extramarital affairs.
If Florence Harding did kill her husband, local sentiment is that she was amply provoked, Ruth said on Friday. “Our theory is she poisoned him because he brought his mistress on the trip,” she said.
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