The company was incorporated in 1869, and completed the line in January 1870. At the time the First Transcontinental Railroad was being built, Brigham Young felt slighted by Union Pacific officials who had decided not to build the railroad through Salt Lake. "We want [the railroad] in this city where it belongs," he said on one occasion to the Mormons in Salt Lake, "the attempt to carry it in that [north] direction is an insult to the people of this city, for in so doing they have tried to shun us." Consequently, Brigham Young formed his own company, the Utah Central Railroad, in order to connect Salt Lake to the Transcontinental Railroad in Ogden, forty miles to the north.[2]
Brigham Young did not attend the grand celebration at Promontory Summit on May 10, 1869, when the two lines crossing the continent met. He did, however, attend the groundbreaking ceremony for the Utah Central Railroad in Ogden held a week later on May 17, 1869, and pitched the first shovel-full of ground to symbolize that construction was officially underway.[3] The following year, Young hammered in the final, commemorative spike, with the words "Holiness to the Lord" engraved upon it, at a special ceremony to celebrate the Utah Central Railroad's completion.[2]
The Mormons were hired to grade the Union Pacific line through Utah during the closing months of the race to complete the transcontinental line. The UP was desperate to push as far westward as possible and collect government loans and land grants. However, UP refused to pay. (At the time, the company was effectively bankrupt). To settle the debt, the UP transferred rails and other supplies plus rolling stock to the Mormons. This provided the material for the Utah Central. See p. 372, Stephen E. Ambrose, "Nothing Like It in the World," 2000: "... Young bombarded the company headquarters in Boston with demands for payment in full. The UP had no money, but it did have equipment left over and Young was desperate to have a branch line, to be owned and controlled by the Mormons, running from Ogden to Salt Lake City. ... The UP gave the Mormons four thousand tons of iron rail ($480,000), 144 tons of spikes ($20,000), thirty-two tons of bolts ($5,600), four first-class passenger cars ($5,000 each), second-class cars, mail cars, flatcars and boxcars."
^ abCowan, Richard O. (Fall 2001). "Steel Rails and the Utah Saints". The Journal of Mormon History.
^"Journal History of the Church". Journal History of the Church. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. May 10–19, 1869. Archived from the original on 2016-03-25. Retrieved April 7, 2016.