Golden Spike Tower and Visitor Center

The Golden Spike Tower and Visitor Center exists because of what sits beside it: Union Pacific's Bailey Yard in North Platte, Nebraska, the largest railroad classification yard in the world. North Platte was platted as a railroad town by chief engineer Grenville Dodge and saw its first train arrive in 1866, growing into a Union Pacific division point; during World War II the North Platte Canteen famously served more than six million service members between 1941 and 1946 during brief train stops. The yard, named for former Union Pacific president Edd H. Bailey, sprawls across 2,850 acres, handles an average of 139 trains and more than 14,000 railroad cars every day, and entered the Guinness Book of Records in 1995 as the world's largest rail yard. Since the working yard itself is off-limits to visitors, the privately operated eight-story tower rises adjacent to its south side, where indoor and outdoor observation decks at 100 feet give the public a safe overlook of train, locomotive, and switching movements across the complex.