Lang

Charles Crocker drove a gold spike here on September 5, 1876 and Los Angeles stopped being isolated. Three thousand Chinese labourers had built the line to this point, a thousand of them chiselling the San Fernando Tunnel through wet sandstone for a dollar a day, dying at it. They came within half an inch of true when the two headings met. The last stretch of track was laid by white crews, and the ceremony photographs are of the men who did not dig.

What the plaque says

On September 5, 1876, Charles Crocker, President of the Southern Pacific Company, drove a gold spike here to complete his company's San Joaquin Valley Line, the first rail connection of Los Angeles with San Francisco and Transcontinental lines.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Vasquez Rocks — 5.1 mi
  Sandstone beds stood on end by the fault underneath, on Tataviam ground, named for a man the county hanged.
• Oak of the Golden Dream — 6.5 mi
  Gold was found in California here in 1842, six years before Sutter's Mill, and the oak it was found under is still standing.
• Pioneer Oil Refinery — 9.1 mi
  The first commercially successful refinery in the West, built in 1876 to take the crude coming down the pipeline from Pico Canyon.
• The Cascades — 10 mi
  The concrete chute where the Los Angeles Aqueduct arrives, and where forty thousand people watched the Owens Valley come south in 1913.

More markers nearby

• Oak of the Golden Dream — 6.5 mi
• San Fernando Cemetery — 8.6 mi
• Lyons Station Stagecoach Stop — 8.7 mi
• Pioneer Oil Refinery — 9.1 mi