When we were planning the Idaho trip it slowly dawned on me that Idaho is kinda close to Utah. Weird, right? Yeah. So I broadened my search for National Park Service units a little and we decided to take a day to go across the southern border into Utah.
Golden Spike National Historic Park is in northern Utah. It celebrates the completion of the transcontinental railroad. They've got a lovely little display, a restored steam engine, some actual rail from that first railroad, and some historical sites that can be visited if you're willing to hike or drive on a dirt road.
We stopped at a couple of different spots, but it was hard to look at a pile of rocks and imagine the importance of these spoils to 19th century USA. We got our stamps and headed farther south to check out the Great Salt Lake before returning to Idaho.
Worth it? Yup. If we ever hope to visit all the units in the NPS, this was good to get checked off. It's way out of the way relative to the other Utah sites so it'll make it much easier to get to the rest of the state's parks.
📍On the lands of the Núu-agha-tʉvʉ-pʉ̱ (Ute) people.
