New englanders who came up here including a ira allen saw the potential of Burlington Bay as a court sitting. Port city. It Lake Champlain flows into the st. Lawrence which gives at burlington, interestingly enough, even though it is an inland place, access to the ocean. Early settlers saw that and became interested. The area did not take off despite the attempts by ira allen to make this an important place by putting the university here, making it the shire town of Chittenden County with the courts and so on. It did not take off until 1820 1823. The Champlain Canal was finished which connected the southern and of Lake Champlain to the hudson river. In essence it opened up all of , those markets to the south of vermont. One historian has said that before 1823, Lake Champlain tipped north. After 1823, it tipped south. Burlington grew tremendously in the 1820s. Having said that it grew tremendously, the population in 1830, 7 years after the canal only 3000 but in 1800 it had only been about 1000. So it was about a prosperous it was a prosperous little place in the 1820s. Ive have resize the word little. In the 1840s, because of this connection, this one away connection to canada, and some very entrepreneurial types saw some potential for bringing canadian lumber up the river down to burlington. Burlington that time was being connected to the railroad system, which was of course in its embryonic form. Railroads were just being introduced in this country the 1830s and 1840s but to Railroad Lines came in to burlington by the 1840s. So burlington had the potential of people bringing down either raw timber or lumber, lumber that was building canada, into burlington and transported onto Railroad Cars and shipped to places south. That also meant people that made various products out of wood, for example broom handles, shoe lasts, window frames, doors, right . They were attracted to the area to come in and set up shop. They set up shop just behind and to the west of me on the lake. Od came in, it was either melt year and then made into goods and shipped out or it was shipped to markets south is finished lumber. Fortunately for burlington, in the late 1830s, textile mills had been established in burlingtons twin town because it is right across the river from burlington and it is a town with big wool and textile mills. Besides being a lumber town, burlington was also a textile town. That helped carry her linkedin burlington through the difficult times when the number taken fell off and not lumber business grew tremendously beginning with the civil war. Beginning with the 1860s, right up to the end of the century. Specifically up to the early 1890s. There is one man who was primarily responsible for that. A fellow by the name of Lawrence Barnes figured out if you put that lumber on Railroad Cars and there is money to be made, a well loved philanthropist who built some of the buildings in town. In the 1890s there was a real dropping off and lumber trade. That was obviously a tricky time for burlington. Ironically, it was the world wars that carried burlington because of those textile mills. The textile mills in winooski were making a heavy will in clot cloth that were made into blankets for the military, topcoats, heavy materials. Sadly for burlingtons history, the mills, as we all know in new england, could not compete with the low labor costs and the low fuel costs of mills in the south. You did not have to he a lot of mills in the south like you had to heat mills and new england. So millwork begin to dry up and in 1954, the big mills here in winooski shut down. Probably about 3000 workers were out of work and that was probably one of the real low points in burlingtons history, the 1950s. Fortunately, there was a group of businessmen, the publisher of the local newspaper, who put their heads together, created a development company, and this is a case where it really worked. And began trying to figure out, how do we bring jobs to the burlington area. Burlington in the 1950s was a pretty sleepy little town at certainly not the place it has become the last 20 years or so. These businessmen who got together, what they decided to do was they would building stateoftheart facility that a business could move into. As luck would have it, just as ic was looking for a tenant for this facility, ibm indicates he, new york, was looking for an expansion facility to build its chips and chose this facility. That was kind of a game changer. Not just for burlington but the whole burlington area because it brought in goodpaying jobs. You know, a lot of professionals. At the same time, a lot of those mill workers that had been put out of work on the textile mills closed could become wine workers line workers in the manufacturing of the chips which were also goodpaying jobs. At its height, ibm come around 1935, 1980, employed it a thousand more 900 or 9000 people employed 8000 or 9000 people. Ibm is no longer here but it was bought by a Company NamedGlobal Industries and they are still in business. Because of that excitement, that money that came into the city, because of the fantastic growth of the university, the university now has 14,000 students or so. Back as recently as 1950, it had about 3000. That has been a major drive in the local economy. Also the university hospital, a private hospital initially founded in the 1880s, it has grown tremendously. So burlington became the surprisingly sophisticated place and of course as probably many , of your viewers know, and the last 25 years or so, burlington and a lot of environmental magazines, outdoor magazines, possibly have named it as one of the best places to live in the United States and certainly i think most people here would agree with that except for maybe in the months of march and april when there is still snow on the ground. We talked about the local lit local economy here. One of the significant individuals in the burlington economic history was the man who built this home. It is now an office but he built an as a home in the early 1840s. Follett,was timothy but now it is named after a Real Estate Company that owns it. Timothy was an interesting man, born in bennington in the 1800s. He came up to the university of vermont. He was in one of the first graduating classes at uvm. Like Lawrence Barnes and ira allen who was very much forward thinking, and he saw what was going to happen to burlington whitney Champlain Canal opened in 1823. He kind of jumped careers at that point and he became a shipping magnet. He and another partner built a pier down at the canal. They began acquiring boats, canal boats. Timothy followed to and his partner probably controlled 90 of the shipping on the lake. Unfortunately in the 1840s he made a Serious Business mistake , although you would not of at the time. He understood that he was in the Transportation Business and so he saw this new thing coming along, roads and he became the leading investor and proponent of bringing a Railroad Line from over on the east side of the lake where lines were already coming up from boston, the east side of boston along the connecticut river, he would build a line connect to those lines over to burlington. He did that. He built a line that came into burlington in about 1847, 1848. He was a little bit premature in the sense that that logging business that would develop in the late 1850s and particularly in the 1860s, was not quite there yet and so follett ended up with a line that went to this town of 3000 people and there was no traffic. It was a very expensive line to build because you had to go to the mountains. So timothy follett, one of the two wealthiest men in burlington and the 1830s and 1840s, thus his home is a relic of his wealth, he basically in the early 1850s goes bellyup. He is impoverished. He dies. Im not quite sure what, but he seems to be brokenhearted and disillusioned. Burlington has produced some interesting political one that i have been intrigued with by years as a man by the name of james edmund burke. Burke was born in the 1850s, learns the trade of a blacksmith, moves to burlington around it 1870 when he is 20yearsold or so and he is a blacksmith. His shop was not far from where we are standing. Probably a block or two over. He gained a reputation as the honest blacksmith. He gets involved in politics, first as an alderman representing this area on the city council and in 1903 he takes on the republican establishment, right . The republicans, who were basically the railroad people, the textile mill people, the real Business Class had control of the town. But the town that really become very diverse. You know, we talk about diversity today as being more of a racial diversity are gender diversity but in those days you had irish and frenchcanadian and a fairly Large Jewish Community and burlington, you had italians, lebanese. Just about all of those people voted democrat and in 1903 they voted for burke and burke became the Second Democratic mayor since the civil war and certainly the first Irish Catholic mayor. There would be a fairly long succession of irish mayors. Burke would be mayor onandoff, not consecutively, until the late 1930s. The last time burke was elected, think he was 86yearsold. He was elected in the midst of the depression because people wanted to shake things up, right . There was so much poverty. He was also niches and character in the sense he was very much a progressive. He wanted an efficient government. He wanted cityowned facilities so that private concerns would not be gouging the public but he was also socially very, very conservative. One year, he heard that emma goldman, the extreme left wing radical is coming to town and her advance man had rented a hall in the old north end of burlington, the workingclass section of town and half an hour before she was scheduled to show up to speak, book shows up with burke shows up with two policemen armed and simply says you are not going to speak in burlington. He was an interesting man that way. Like i said, socially very conservative but in Many Political ways, a progressive. But much beloved it in the town. Then of course, in terms of personalities who have gone on too much bigger things, you had Bernie Sanders. Bernie had come to vermont probably in the early 1970s. As many people did, right . For man from aunt always had that cachet, a place to get back to the earth, back to your roots, be a real person, get away from corporate america. Bernie was part of that movement. It was through the 1970s. When bernie threw his hat into the ring, a race for governor, yes, i am in. Race of house of the representatives . Guess, im in. He was a little bit of a laughingstock at he had a very clear message i think as we knew. He was very much for the working people, for the issues that concern working people. In 1981 in a fluke election, there had been an incumbent mayor, i gordon with a frenchcanadian background. He had been mayor for quite a number of years, he again was going to run but there was one of the members of the old italian community, dickie bove who have it nice Italian Restaurant here in the county for years, there had been a and he decided to run as an independent. Bernie sanders throws his into the ring as an independent. , bove tooktic vote enough votes from him bad Bernie Sanders one need marrow election i think it was about one need marrow election wone th won the Mayoral Election with a very narrow margin. He brought in great people to be in the post and set the groundwork for burlington becoming the progressive city. Something that we and burlington have known over the years that might not be so readily apparent to someone who is visiting burlington, vermont, is at the demised by a saying, a joke, if you will, that we will pass around from time to time. The line is Something Like this the nicest thing about burlington is that it is so close to vermont. And the reason it is meaningful is because i think everyones image of vermont, and even those of us who live in it is of this rural state, maybe even a little backward in its ways. Maybe a picture of america that used to exist but does not exist anymore where in fact burlington is an extremely sophisticated place it is sophisticated on a very small scale, right . We have a population of 41,00042,000. You have the headquarters of all the banks here. You have courts here. You have the main offices for most vermont businesses of any size. You have a very educated population here. So, it is not this backward rural place that people think of when they think of vermont. Announcer our cities tour staff recently traveled to burlington, vermont, to learn about its rich history. Learn more at cspan. Org\cities tour. Youre watching American History tv, all weekend every weekend on cspan3. Cspan, where history unfolds daily. In 1979, cspan was created as a Public Service of the American Cable Television companies and is brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider. We look at 75 years to 19 42, when british and American Forces launched the invasion of north africa, then occupied by nazi germany. This is a preview of the film tunisian victory. It. Ow we are going to get italy, china. , finally, on the fifth day, we got the news did they handed out little guidebooks and you are to do duty in north africa as a soldier of the United States. What was the plan . The convoy from america was heading east, the one from britain heading south. The british convoy would divide. They would proceed in opposite directions. The second half would reverse its course and follow the first. The clock like precision, combined operations would begin with simultaneous landings at casablanca. Algiers. Casablanca protected our flanks. Then the occupation of tunisia, from which we could cut supply lines across the mediterranean. One arm of the axis would be amputated and supply lines would be shortened by half. It north africa would be hours with basis from which to staff at the heart of the axis said no. Film sunday entire at 4 00. Only on cspan3. Next a panel of historians explore the idea of civil war defenses on a variety of angles. They talk about military