The Jupiter was built in September 1868 by the Schenectady Locomotive Works of New York, along with three other engines of identical specifications, numbered 61, 62, and 63 named the Storm, Whirlwind, and Leviathan, respectively.

These were then dismantled and sailed to San Francisco, California, loaded onto a river barge, and sent to the Central Pacific headquarters in Sacramento.

The Jupiter was assigned to the railroad's Salt Lake Division, the third and eastern most segment of the road traveling east from Sacramento,[2] operating in passenger and general goods services as well as construction trains from Toano, Nevada to Promontory Summit, and later Ogden, Utah.

In 1893 it was converted to burn coal, and later that year was sold to the Gila Valley, Globe and Northern Railway and designated GVG&N #1.

[3][page needed] In 1924 John Ford made the movie The Iron Horse, which showed a depiction of the ceremony with a title card that reads, "The wedding of the rails -- celebrated with joyous exultation in the uniting of East and West.

The 1939 film Union Pacific also featured a recreation of the ceremony, in which the Jupiter was portrayed by Virginia and Truckee Railroad's Inyo.

In 1970, the Reno was sold to Old Tucson Studios, while the Genoa was returned to the state of California, with the Inyo and Dayton replacing them as displays at Promontory.

In 1974, the National Park Service had approached O'Connor Engineering Laboratories of Costa Mesa, California, to construct exact, full-size replicas of the Jupiter and Union Pacific 119.

That same year, the existing engines portraying the Jupiter and 119 (the Inyo and Dayton, respectively), had been sold to the state of Nevada, though they remained displayed at the Golden Spike NHP until the construction of the new replicas was complete.

[5] In the early 1990s, a vague description of the Jupiter's livery had been found in a recently uncovered March 1869 issue of The Sacramento Bee, in which the engine was said to be blue, crimson, and gold.