The Alaska Railroad’s Golden Spike Hammered in by President Harding Will Return to Its Home State

On July 15, 1923, President Warren Harding hammered a golden spike into train tracks in central Alaska. It was the ceremonial final piece of the Alaska Railroad, which connected inner Alaska to the coastal city of Seward, sparking the resource-rich state’s industrial development.

For about a century, the 14-karat gold spike has been in the hands of private owners outside Alaska. But now, it’s coming home. Last week, the Anchorage Museum and the city of Nenana—near the spot where Harding hammered the spike in 1923—worked together to purchase the artifact, per a statement from the museum.

The spike’s first owner was Colonel Frederick Mears, the railroad’s chief engineer. Earlier in 1923, the city of Anchorage presented it to Mears to commemorate his role in the project’s completion, and he had loaned it to the city for the presidential hammering.

In the years that followed, the golden spike changed hands several times. The last of those owners, who bought it in 1983, recently decided to sell it through auction house Christie’s. Although specialists expected the artifact to fetch up to $50,000, the city and the museum ended up paying more than $200,000.

The spike will now be put on display in its home state. Anchorage and Nenana will likely take turns displaying the object, reports the Associated Press’ Mark Thiessen.

“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,” says Joshua Verhagen, Nenana’s mayor, in the statement. “I look forward to working together and tying our communities together once again with this same golden spike.”

Harding hammered the golden spike into a bridge in Nenana now known as the Mears Memorial Bridge. The “ambitious” single-span trestle bridge over the Tanana River closed the Alaska Railroad’s final gap, per the museum. Harding’s ceremonial contribution marked both the first time a U.S. president had visited Alaska—which wouldn’t become a state until 1959—and the only time a sitting president has hammered a railroad spike. (He missed twice and hit it home on the third try.) Unfortunately, Harding’s journey would be his last: He died of a probable heart attack later that year.

The Alaska Railroad began as a private line in the early 1900s, extending some 50 miles north of Seward. About a decade later, the federal government expressed interest in developing the railway to expand Alaskan mining operations. Congress spent $35 million on the project, which would span some 500 miles. In 1985, the government sold the railroad to the state of Alaska for $22 million.

In late 2024, Monica Shah, the Anchorage Museum’s deputy director of collections and conservation, heard “some rumblings” that a rare, long-hidden piece of Alaskan history had become a centerpiece of Christie’s upcoming Americana Week sale, as she tells Artnet’s Eileen Kinsella.

The golden spike had been briefly exhibited in Fairbanks in 1967 and Anchorage in 2001. Other than that, it had remained mostly inaccessible to the public. Per the museum, the Christie’s auction—the spike’s first public sale in more than 40 years—was a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to secure it for the people of Alaska.”

“We are thrilled to partner with Nenana to share this piece of history with the public,” says Julie Decker, the Anchorage Museum’s director, in the statement. “The golden spike is a great piece of storytelling about place and people.”

Sonja Anderson | READ MORE

Sonja Anderson is a writer and reporter based in Chicago.