( narrator )
The Civil War is over. Survivors head out across
the frontier. A vast wilderness
separates East and West. Veterans become railway men, cowboys... ( woman screaming ) ... settlers. Conquering nature,
they'll unite the continent. Their mission: to tame the Wild West. We are pioneers
and trailblazers. We fight for freedom. We transform our dreams
into the truth. Our struggles
will become a nation. Captioning presented by<font color="#0000FF">
A&E TELEVISION NETWORKS</font> 1865. The Great Plains. Where 30 million
buffalo roam. Vast, untouched, a wilderness
dividing America. Crossing the continent
takes six months. 20,000 die on wagon trains. By ship, it's an
18,000-mile journey around South America. To conquer the wilderness
and unite East and West, President Lincoln green-lights
a Transcontinental Railroad... 2,000 miles long. It will transform
the nation, triggering
a tidal wave of settlement across the Great Plains. ( man )
The railroads were vital to
the expansion of America. This technology
connects people in a way that never before in
the history of mankind has there been that
kind of connection. America's ancient wilderness meets modern
American steel and muscle. An army of
hammer-wielding men. Irish immigrants. Civil War vets. Railway men. Their mission:
to tame nature itself. The biggest obstacle heading
east from California, a 12,000-foot
wall of granite, the Sierra Nevada. Where the Pacific and
North American plates collide, billions of tons of ancient
rock rise up, crumpling like tinfoil. Over the last
4 million years, the Sierra Nevada mountains climb more than
2 miles high. They're still growing. 13 feet in
1,000 years. One day, they could rival
the Himalayas. Only a madman would dream
of running a railroad across mountains like this. They don't call him
"Crazy Judah" for nothing. Obsessed with
the railroad, he sees a way through. Come on down, boys. Theodore Judah makes
23 trips into the peaks. And peg that, boys. Plotting a path
across ridges and through
mountain summits. Building it will be the engineering challenge
of the century. Yup, let's mark that. ( "Theodore Judah" )
This is the most magnificent
project ever conceived, an enterprise more
important to the people of the United States
than any other. The railroad will be built and I will have something
to do with it. ( woman )
Americans love someone
who can go through seemingly difficult
or impossible things and make their
dreams happen. With Judah's route approved,
two companies begin work. The Union Pacific
starts from Omaha in the East. The Central Pacific, from
Sacramento in the West. They'll meet in Utah. It will cost over 2 billion
in modern money, but the government
doesn't have enough cash. It pays the companies
in federal land. They must
finish in 15 years or lose everything. ( man )
We have learned
in this country that you really don't
get anywhere in life if you don't
take some risks. I think America is by far
the shining light of the world
in so many ways because we are
risk takers. Paid by the mile,
adding curves adds profit. Corrupt investors built
the railroad for every
cent they can. A nine-mile curve means an extra 120 acres
of federal land. They'll end up owning
an area the size of Texas. First, they must conquer
the Donner Pass. 7,500 feet up,
the highest on Judah's route. Cursed by 30 feet of snow
each winter. Avalanches, tragedy. ( wolves howling ) Here, just 20 years earlier, the Donner Party became
trapped in the snow and ate each other. Now Judah's railroad cuts
right through the mountain. 1,649 feet of rock
must be excavated. The longest
tunnel on the route. Chinese laborers dig
day and night. It's easier to
ship workers from China than get Americans across
the continent. The railroad
magnates said, "The Chinese built
the Great Wall, didn't they ? Let's bring the Chinese
in to do this work." Over 10,000 Chinese laborers earn less and do
the deadliest jobs. ( woman )
The Transcontinental
Railroad was built by Chinese workers
brought over specifically to work on the railroad and they were considered
somewhere in between human and animal. They were not expected
to survive. They were expected to
come here and work and die. 7,000 miles from home, 17-year-old
Hung Lai Woh swaps a life of poverty
in Canton for the backbreaking
work on a railroad gang. Hung Lai Woh must cut through
granite so tough, a rock the size of a big toe will support
a 50-ton locomotive. Progress slows to
inches a day. To break through,
they need nitroglycerin. But transporting it is banned when 15 men are blown
to pieces. In a mobile lab,
Scottish chemist James Howden mixes it on the spot. Nitroglycerin is 13 times
more powerful than gunpowder. So unstable, any physical shock and it will
explode in his hands. Howden gets hazard pay. $4,000 a month
in modern money. After three months in
the mountains, he turns to drink, leaving the nitro to
Chinese men like Hung Lai Woh. Irish crews won't touch it. Detonation creates
temperatures of 9,000°, as hot as the surface
of the sun. ( speaking Cantonese ) ( speaking Cantonese ) An estimated
1,500 Chinese die in explosions and rock slides. Hung Lai Woh survives. His son will be
the first Chinese-American to graduate in engineering from the University of
California at Berkeley. Once through the mountains, track laying accelerates from
10 inches to 6 miles a day. Each spike is
struck three times. Ten spikes to
a rail. 400 rails a mile. 21 million hammer swings
complete the railroad. May 10, 1869. A one-word message
arrives by telegraph: "Done." A six-month journey
across the continent is cut to six days. ( Al )
The folks who had once
had to risk everything in a wagon train--
that is eliminated. You can now get on
the railroad and travel from
Boston to Sacramento. That's a revolution. The Internet of the era, the Transcontinental Railroad
changes everything it touches, triggering a mass migration
to the Great Plains. ( whistle blowing ) ( narrator )
The Great Plains. Conquered by steel and steam. ( whistle blowing ) The Transcontinental Railroad
threads a thin line of civilization
through the wilderness. People follow. In just one year, 40,000
settlers move to Nebraska, fanning out across the frontier
in wagon trains. When in
the mid-19th century to the late 19th century,
they went out and settled some of the most hostile
territory known to mankind. The Great Plains
where I grew up. These were true pioneers. The government accelerates
the process with the greatest
land giveaway in history. Anyone with a $10
filing fee can claim free land. A quarter are single women
and ex-slaves. When you see
the desperate scramble in these rickety wagon trains, you realize that the promise
of America was land. These are people
who never in a million years would be able to own
land in Europe. Eventually, 10% of
the United States will be given away
under the Homestead Act. ( "Uriah Oblinger" )
I'm not going back to
Indiana to rent until I bust entirely
and have to walk back. Uriah Oblinger,
Civil War vet, claims his
160 acres in Nebraska. There's a catch. 110° summers
spark prairie fires. Trees can't survive the drought
and flames. There's so little rain,
nothing grows here but grass. Without lumber to build houses, the new inhabitants
live in mud huts built of sod
cut from the plains. Uriah dismantles his wagon
to make doors and windows. ( man )
They often had insects. They invited snakes. It was, well, pretty much
like living in a burrow in the ground. ( woman )
I think the pioneers
did have it hard. They conserved,
they were frugal. The one dress lasted
a long, long time. For Uriah's wife, Mattie,
it's a price worth paying. ( "Mattie Oblinger" )
I expect you think
we live miserable because we are in
a sod house. But I tell you,
in solid earnest, I never enjoyed
myself better. Every lick we
strike is for ourselves and not half for
someone else. The devout Oblingers face
daily tests of their faith. With no mountains
to stop the wind, the Great Plains are
a breeding ground for massive thunderstorms. ( "Uriah Oblinger" )
The most objection I have to
the weather here is the wind. There's a great deal of it
during winter and spring, and being nothing to
break it, one feels it more. Don't go too far, honey. The Oblingers
live in Tornado Alley. More twisters hit this region
than anywhere else on Earth. Ellie ! Ellie ! Ellie ! Ellie ! Over 400 touch down
every year. Ellie ! Get inside, get inside ! ( "Uriah Oblinger" )
Tell the folks they never
seen a storm in Indiana, only playthings. 200-mile-an-hour winds
spin into a vortex... sucking in air
and anything not bolted down. In 1930, a man is carried a mile
across Kansas. Fish and toads
rain from the sky. The Oblingers hunker down
in their heavy sod house... clinging to their newfound
independence. ( woman )
I think that we're a nation
of people descended from tough old coots
and tough old broads, and I say that with
great admiration. They just wanted to
control their own future and to have children who could control
their own destiny. Tornadoes aren't the only
Biblical challenge the Oblingers face. By a river
in the Rockies, the end of the world
is brewing. A prehistoric species emerges to battle
for the Great Plains. Locusts. After devouring
the local vegetation, they release pheromones that
signal it's time to move on. They grow long wings. Swarms head
east on the wind. They join up over
the Great Plains and become a plague. In 1874, they devour half
of the crops in the West. 3 trillion locusts. Half a mile high, 100 miles wide,
1,000 miles long, as big as Colorado, they block out the sun. Agricultural
Armageddon. To men like Uriah, the locusts are
the wrath of God. By 1892, half the population of
western Nebraska goes back East. Uriah stays. ( man )
You have to be brave
in order to achieve in this country,
because nothing's set right there for you. You have to take
chances. And I think bravery
and fear are the same thing, it's just a matter of how you
react to that same feeling. Those who stick it out
get lucky. Within 30 years,
the locust is extinct. Its breeding grounds
in the Rockies plowed over by
settlers like Uriah. In ten years, the Great Plains become the breadbasket
of the country. For the first time,
America can feed itself. Today 50 million tons of
wheat is farmed each year, but trees are still scarce and to build towns,
settlers need wood. In Michigan, Wisconsin,
and Minnesota loggers harvest over
50 million acres of trees. Green gold. A magnet for
Scandinavian woodsmen. Between 1825 and 1925, a third of Norway's entire
population comes to America. Including Nils Haugen. ( "Nils Haugen" )
The pay was $3 a day. You had to have a good pair
of driving boots, well-caulked, to be able
to keep on top of the logs. There's millions
of dollars at stake. If the flow of logs stops,
towns can't be built. Logjam. River man's ruin. In 1886, pine to build
20,000 homes gets stuck on
the St. Croix River. 150 million feet of wood. Remove the right log and the rest will
explode downstream. River men die clearing obstructions
like this. Pull ! In 1892, 2 billion feet of
lumber will be cut in Wisconsin alone. The railroad feeds lumber into
the West's construction boom. Towns are built so fast, there's no time
to name streets. They're given letters
and numbers. The Great Plains is also home
to the most numerous species of large
wild mammal on Earth. 30 million buffalo. Herds up to 25 miles long race to summer
breeding grounds. On a collision course
with the modern world. ( narrator )
The railroad brings
a new kind of hunter to the Great Plains. Driven by profit, fresh from the carnage
of the Civil War. ( men shouting ) Two million rifles
are in circulation. Over a million veterans
trained to use them have a new target
in their sights. Frank Mayer. Civil War vet. Buffalo hunter. ( "Frank Mayer" )
I had nothing to look
forward to in civilization. I was crazy about guns. Mayer tracks
2,000-pound buffalo. Easily capable of
crushing a man. He picks them off
from 200 yards. If you could kill them, what they brought
was yours. They were
walking gold pieces. Hunters harvest the buffalo
for its hide. In 1872, they ship over
one million out of Kansas alone, worth $3 apiece back East. On a good day, Mayer earns
more than the president. Factories use long strips of
buffalo leather as drive belts. Small pieces
become coats and shoes. To meet demand, hunters kill
8,000 buffalo a day for their hides alone. ( Al )
For Americans,
this is progress, because this is
a natural resource. From the Indian
perspective, they couldn't understand what the white people
were doing. But of course,
they knew that the decimation of those buffalo herds would change their
lives forever. The Plains Indians depend on
the buffalo and worship them. ( "Black Elk" )
The buffalo were our strength from whence we came and at whose breast we suck
as babies all our lives. Black Elk is six years old
when the railroad arrives. Unlike the white hunters, his people waste
none of their kill. Sinews become bowstrings. Bones are cups
and spoons. Skin is clothing,
tepees and coffins. Native Americans and buffalo have coexisted
since the last ice age. Black Elk's ancestors
hunted them on foot. There were
no horses to ride. The modern horse isn't
native to North America. Spanish conquistadors brought
them from Europe in 1493. Some escaped to
the Great Plains. Perfect horse habitat. 400 years later, over a million
mustangs run wild. Taming horses transforms
the life of the Plains Indian. They become expert horsemen. ( horse neighing ) ( "Black Elk" )
The battle cry went up,
"Hokahey !" Which means "to charge." And the hunters
went in for the kill. On horseback, the bow is
the weapon of choice. In the time
it takes to reload a gun... a warrior can ride
300 yards and fire 20 arrows. Buffalo can run
at 35 miles an hour. Hunts cover hundreds of miles
over many days. It can take 15 arrows
to kill a buffalo. White hunters like Frank Mayer
use a single cartridge. He aims for the lungs. A clean kill
drops a buffalo without disturbing the herd. 30 million are killed
in little over a decade. After hunters take the hides, trainloads of men
arrive to pick their carcasses. They make buttons from bones and grind down skeletons for
fertilizer and porcelain. The primary resource keeping
Native Americans alive... is gone. Facing starvation, they're
forced onto reservations. ( man )
My great-great-grandmother,
Grandma Big Eagle, was alive when
buffalo hunting ended. They weren't just
saying good-bye to a kind of a foodstuff, they were
saying good-bye to a way of being
in the world, and I think for them
to look back on that... was just unspeakably sad. In 1889,
just 85 wild buffalo exist in the whole
United States. The men who ride
the great iron horse are taming the wilderness. The railroad
will bring another modern American icon
to the Great Plains. ( gunshots firing ) ( men yelping ) The last of the great
frontiersmen. The cowboy. ( narrator )
1865. The Civil War leaves
cities on the Eastern Seaboard stripped of resources. The country's booming
population needs food. ( cows mooing ) In Texas, over 6 million
cattle roam wild. ( men yelping ) Worth $4 a head here, but back East,
they're worth 40. ( whistle blowing ) By 1868, the railroad spreads
from the East, crossing Kansas,
but it hasn't reached Texas. There's still 1,000 miles
of Wild West between the herds
and the railroad. For that kind of cattle drive, America needs
a new kind of hero. The cowboy. After the Civil War, 60% of the South's population
lives in rural poverty. ( whistle blowing ) ( man )
Ladies and gentlemen... In search of work,
a new kind of adventurer heads west to cattle towns
like Abilene, Wichita and Dodge City. One farmhand
heading to Texas is Teddy Blue Abbott. ( horse neighing ) 23-year-old Teddy Blue is the son of
a Nebraska homesteader. ( "Teddy Blue Abbott" )
My father wanted to
tie me down and make
a farmer out of me. Never. I ran away from home
to become a cowboy. The cowboy mentality, it's a spirit of
individualism. ( cows mooing ) I have a communion with
the land, with my horse. It symbolizes a resistance
to authority. Teddy Blue is one of
35,000 cowboys who will drive cattle
to the railroad in Kansas. Standing in their way, 1,000 miles of
untamed West, unforgiving terrain
and gangs of rustlers. For only a dollar a day, cowboys must be
skilled horsemen and cattle wranglers. ( horse neighing ) ( man yelping ) The lasso dates back to
the ancient Egyptians. Mexican ranchers have
been using them for centuries and pass their skills on to
cowboys north of the border. Cattle brought over
by the Spanish in 1493 had bred with settlers' cows
from England creating a new breed,
the Texas Longhorn. ( thundering ) After centuries
roaming the plains, they're wild and easily spooked. Teddy Blue hears what
every cowboy dreads. Stampede. ( horse neighing ) ( men yelping ) Over four cattle drives, Teddy Blue buries
three pals. A tough job...
for tough men. One out of three cowboys is Hispanic
or African-American. After the Civil War, thousands of freed slaves
head to Texas looking for work. One is a 23-year-old
from Alabama. Nat Love. It's his first chance to be
judged for his skills, not just the color of his skin. ( "Nat Love" )
The guys on the team are as
broad-minded as the plains. It's every creed for himself and every friend for
each other 'til the end. ( Henry )
Many of the cowboys, to the surprise
of most of us, happen to be
African-Americans. Black people have the dream
of conquering the imagination just like white people do. The West:
vast, wild, lawless. With herds worth up
to $200,000... cowboys guard
the cattle with their lives... and their guns. Guns are a way of life
in Texas. Then and now. Even today, Texans own
over 51 million firearms. It's very intrinsic
to the American culture, the American identity. We always had
a pistol or a rifle. And I think it's part of "Don't try to tell me
what to do. I'll fight off
my enemies on my own." The cowboy's gun
of choice ? The Colt .45. Fastest handgun
in the West. Six shots without reloading. Colt produces over
30 million guns... the most popular
being the iconic .45. In 1873, a Colt .45 cost $17, half a cowboy's
monthly salary. Six rounds of bullets,
half a day's pay. Frontier men would say, Abraham Lincoln may have
freed all men, but Sam Colt
made them equal. Cowboys drive 5 million cattle from Texas to
the railroad in Kansas, the largest migration of
livestock in US history. But one simple invention will soon threaten the cowboy's
entire way of life. Barbed wire. In just 20 years,
2½ million new settlers flood into the West. New farms cover half a billion
acres of open range. A new battle rages, cattle rancher
vs. homesteader. Cowboys like Teddy Blue and farmers are on
a collision course. ( "Teddy Blue Abbott" )
They'd plant a crop
next to the trail. When the cattle
got into their wheat, they'd come out waving
a shotgun and yelling for damages. Boundary disputes are violent,
often deadly. One farmer is determined to
find a cheap and effective way to keep livestock
off his land. Joseph Glidden. ( man )
When we think about
innovation in America, we often think about the big,
audacious projects, like the Apollo project. But there's another strain
to American innovation, and that's
the local inventor. An individual genius
with some passion in the middle of the night coming up with that big,
transformative idea. In the fall of 1873, Glidden has
a breakthrough. Using a coffee grinder, he crudely fashions
some steel barbs. His problem:
how to secure them. Glidden's solution: bind the barbs between
two lengths of wire. His design cuts
the price of fencing by 70%. Within ten years, Glidden sells enough to go
around the world 25 times, carving the plains into
countless ranches and farms and blocking the cattle trails. The open range
is closed forever. ( H.W. )
This single invention
made possible the settling of
the West much sooner and more efficiently than would have
occurred otherwise. Teddy Blue rides
one of the last cattle drives to the railroad. The heyday of the cowboy
on the open range lasts only 20 years. But settling
the Great Plains will mark the end of one way
of life... ( whistle blowing ) and the birth of another. ( narrator )
1876. A century of
government policies target Native Americans. 371 treaties to keep them
separate, isolated, remote. Most of America's 300,000
tribespeople now live on
government-assigned lands. Reservations. But resistance is
still fierce. ( woman )
I think probably the darkest
spot in our history, for me, at least, is what happened to
the Native Americans. We came here and confiscated
their homeland. I think we have
a real sense now of what our part was in that, one that I would love to
see redefined, rewritten. Across the Great Plains,
the federal government acquires millions of
acres of the Native Americans' traditional hunting ground to make way
for the iron horse. The Sioux are forced deep
into the Black Hills. As a young boy, Black Elk witnesses the coming
of the railroad and the destruction
of the buffalo herds. Now, age 12, he's about to be part of
the Sioux Nation's last triumph. ( "Black Elk" )
White men come in
like a river. They told us that they
wanted only a little land. But our people
knew better. Gold is discovered
in the Black Hills. 100,000 prospectors rush in to seek
their fortune. The federal government
wants to clear the area. On a reconnaissance mission
with the 7th Cavalry, Lieutenant Colonel George Custer stumbles across the Sioux camp
near the Little Bighorn River. Custer makes
a fateful decision. With 700 soldiers, Custer charges a camp with
7,000 Native Americans. Within three hours, all the men in Custer's
regiment are dead. The Sioux
win the battle... but will lose the war. In response, US soldiers force 3,000 Sioux warriors
onto reservations. The rest scatter
in small bands. Over the next 14 years, the Plains Indians
struggle to survive, until the incident that
finally defeats the great Sioux Nation. Wounded Knee is a great,
great scar on the American landscape. December 29, 1890. The last band of
independent Sioux surrender beside
Wounded Knee Creek. As the cavalry disarms them, a gun goes off
accidentally. It triggers a massacre. Within minutes,
over 200 Sioux warriors, women and children...
are dead. Now 27,
Black Elk survived. ( "Black Elk" )
When I look back now, I can still see the butchered
women and children lying heaped and scattered, as plain as when I saw
them with eyes still young. And I see that something
else died there. A people's
dream died there. It was a beautiful dream. The railroad has
transformed North America. In just 30 years, 30,000 miles of track
across the continent, more than the rest of
the world put together. Thousands of new
towns spring up around railroad stations,
one every 8 miles. Five rail lines link
the East and West Coasts. The railroad even changes
time itself. Until now, Americans
set their clocks by the sun. 8,000 different times
along 500 rail lines. Scheduling trains
becomes impossible. On November 18, 1883, the Continental US is reduced
to just four time zones. Standard time is born. The railroad is now the largest
employer in America. Nearly a million workers. One is a 23-year-old
station agent from rural Minnesota. Richard Sears. With the US adjusting to
new railroad times, Sears turns entrepreneur and buys a batch
of pocket watches. He offers them to other
station agents and waits. Bingo. An order comes through, followed by another...
and then another. Within six months,
Sears sells all his watches, 2,500. Earning ten times
his railroad salary. Realizing he can use
the railroad for sales and distribution, Sears jumps on
the opportunity with an idea that will
transform the nation: the mail-order catalog. I think Americans are
naturally entrepreneurial. If you worked hard and if
you had good ideas and you were willing to
make short-term sacrifices, you could succeed
in this country. Next one, this is-- Ten years after selling his
first watch, Sears publishes
a 700-page catalog. Now based in Chicago, he processes over
35,000 orders a day, delivering refrigerators,
pianos, and one year,
over 100,000 sewing machines. Using the railroad, Sears can sell virtually
anything anywhere in the country. ( James )
What really transformed
this country wasn't just
the westward migration, and the development of
cities in the East, but the ability
to move products across great distances, linking together what had
previously been very disparate
little settlements that had to be largely
self-sufficient. By the end of the 19th century, America has 200,000 miles
of railroad track, linking the local markets and creating
a national economy. Over the next 40 years, the amount of freight
carried by rail shoots from 55
to nearly 700 million tons. Resources from the Midwest feed the country's growing
industries in the East. The United States
overtakes Britain as the largest
manufacturer on Earth, soon producing 30% of
the world's goods. ( H.W. )
The railroads laid the basis for the creation of
the single largest market in world economy, and this made it possible
for the United States to become
the global economic power that it did by the end of
the 19th century. In 20 years, the US population
doubles to 80 million. The number of cities triples. 7 million Americans
leave the country for the nation's
booming urban centers. Where buffalo
once roamed now rises the modern world. Captioning presented by<font color="#0000FF">
A&E TELEVISION NETWORKS</font> Captioned by<font color="#00FFFF">
Soundwriters™</font>
