Did you miss one of the Pictures of the Week? No problem!
Just check out the POTW archive and wipe away those tears!

Five months after starting this website, I embarked on a journey to locate the fabled 24-karat Golden Spike driven at Nenana signifying the completion of the Alaska Railroad and then presented to Colonel Mears by the city of Anchorage for his work as Chairman of the Alaskan Engineering Commission. On September 5, 1997, I began contacting a wide variety of sources including the Harding Home Museum, Anchorage Museum of History and Art, Smithsonian Institute, and the Alaska State Historian, Office of History and Archeology. Very few of these contacts had information and those that did were erroneous. As it turned out the best lead was "Rails North, the Railroads of Alaska and the Yukon" which stated the spike was now owned by the Southern California Arms Collectors Association. When I contacted them, they said they no longer had it and didn't know where it was located. Really? You sold it and then can't (or won't) tell me who you sold it to? My hunt continued for 13 years. On April 14, 2010, I was contacted by Ben Nysewander who informed me he was the current owner of the golden spike. In one of his emails, he stated, "I just happened on to your website and thought I would let you know where the spike was. There seemed to be a lot of people interested in locating it. I purchased the spike from the estate of Mr. Fred Johnson, of the California Arms Collectors Association in 1983. It is engraved 'Presented to Col. Fredrick Mears by the City of Anchorage in commemoration of the building of the Alaska Railroad 1915-1923'. The reverse side is stamped 'Jos. Mayer Inc. Makers Seattle USA, 14K'. I also have letters from Mayer Bros. and the Alaska 67 committee to Mr Johnson addressing his loaning the spike to them for the 1967 Exposition in Fairbanks." I had a wide variety of entities contact me to purchase and/or borrow the spike, but I honored Mr. Nysewander's request of privacy. On December 6, 2024, I was contacted by Catherine Kirk, Ben Nysewander's daughter, who told me her father was auctioning the Gold Spike. "My dad asked me to reach out and let you know that the spike will be going up for auction through Christie's in January. It is my hope that the spike will finally end up in a museum so that it can be appreciated by all the railroad and history enthusiasts out there." I appreciated Catherine giving me a "heads up" and passed the information on to the Anchorage Museum as well as the Alaska Railroad. Yes, I registered on Christie's so I could watch the bidding on this grand historical piece of Alaska Railroad memorabilia (or maybe pick myself up an incredible bargain). On January 25, 2025, the auction date finally arrived and I found myself driving in Louisville, Kentucky as part of a group geocaching trip. I pulled my car safely off the road, logged on to their smartphone app, and watched history unfold. Christie's website displayed $30,000-$50,000 which represented the auction house's educated guess about the likely selling range for an item, but the bidding quickly blew past that mark. When the auctioneer's hammer finally came down at 10:17 a.m. Alaska time, the spike found its forever home with the Anchorage Museum and City of Nenana for $160,000 ($201,600 actual which included the buyer's premium and hammer price and all relevant taxes and shipping costs.) Now that the spike is returning to Alaska, it will be displayed in turn by the Anchorage Museum and the city of Nenana. My next journey will be to visit the gold spike in person.

Picture of the Week for 1/27/25