What kinds of gifts were exchanged at the meeting of the two tracks?
It’s hard to know exactly what to believe about the details of the joining of the rails ceremony as much of the information comes from newspaper articles that were written and filed just before May 8th when the ceremony was originally scheduled (the ceremony actually took place on May 10th). See what is generally regarded as the definitive article on the subject by Bowman to which the CPRR Museum has added an illustration pertinent to your question. The golden “last spike” had a gold nugget at its tip that was broken off and made into a very limited number of gifts. This included 7 miniature golden spikes which were watch fobs (charms for a pocket watches), and possibly also several finger rings. We don’t know exactly when these few souvenir gifts were presented.
