Tracklaying race of 1869

Ten Mile Day
Map of Golden Spike National Historical Park, whose grounds include the site of Camp Victory (where workers paused for lunch) and the end of the record-setting 10 miles of track laid in one day, west of the Visitor's Center.
Overview
Owner	Central Pacific Railroad
Service
System	First transcontinental railroad
History
Opened	28 April 1869 (1869-04-28)
Closed	1 January 1905 (1905-01-01)
Technical
Track length	10.01 mi (16.11 km)
Track gauge	1,435 mm (4 ft 8+1⁄2 in) standard gauge

The tracklaying race of 1869 was an unofficial contest between tracklaying crews of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads, held during the construction of the first transcontinental railroad. The competition was to determine who would first reach the meeting place at Promontory, Utah. Starting in 1868, the railroad crews set, and subsequently broke, each other's world records for the longest length of track laid in a single day. This culminated in the April 28, 1869, record set by Chinese and Irish crews of the Central Pacific who laid 10 miles 56 feet (16.111 km) of track in one day. That record was broken in August 1870, by about 1,000 feet (300 m), by two crews of the Kansas Pacific, working from opposite ends of the same track.^[a]

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