Victorian Visual Culture

I started this as a comment to the previous post about the Irish immigrants in Pennsylvania, which I found very interesting. However, there were too many fun things to share that I wasn’t able to do in the comment box, so hence the real post…

This summer I visited the Golden Spike National Historic Site at Promontory Summit in Utah. This is where the Union and Central Pacific Railroads were joined on May 10, 1869, completing the first Transcontinental Railroad. I was extremely surprised to come across the following plaque:

If you can’t read it, it says “To the Irish who toiled on the Transcontinental Railroad uniting our nation.  ~The Hibernian Society of Utah, March 17, 1996, Dedicated on May 13, 1998”

I was surprised and pleased to discover this considering how much the Irish worked on the railroad, and as the previous post pointed how, how many lost their lives.  I’ve included a link to the Hibernian Society of Utah because I had never heard of them (apparently many states have Hibernian Societies), and because it seems like a pretty cool thing for those interested in Irish culture.

http://www.irishinutah.org/index.php