Transcripts For CSPAN American History Tour Of Westward Expansion 20140906

The programs youre watching. Tonight on cspans American History tour going west. First to st. Louis to visit the museum of westward expansion. Then a look at the expedition led by William Clark and mary lewis. And well speak with an author who wrote a book about the lewis and Clark Expedition. After that, first Transcontinental Railroad. After that journeys along the mormon trail, the pony express from the National Historic trails Interpretive Center in casper wyoming. Next a tour of the museum of westward expansion. Our tour guide is a historian with the National Park service. Were in the museum of westward expansion which is the main museum here at Jefferson National memorial. It tells the story of the settlement of the American West during the 19th century. Were actually underground directly below the 630foot stainless steel arch. Originally there were going to be surface buildings that would have housed museums and restaurant complexes and things like that but the National Parks service which runs the site and the architect both saw that the arch would be better served to stand alone, to be unrivaled by anything else. So they decided to put everything underground, all the infrastructure to run the arch, all of the Visitor Facilities would be beneath the ground. And so thats how this museum came to be located where it is, beneath where the arch is. In terms of what this museum has to offer our Current Museum, it basically holds a capsule story of westward expansion during the 19th century and its laid out with rings of time that are above our heads concentric rings that are almost like rip ples in a pond as if you dropped a stone into a pond and the ripples emanate outward and thats what happened here starting with our statue of Thomas Jefferson and extending through the 19th century so the first time ring is 1800 and the last one is 1900. Our Current Museum will not be here very much longer. In the next couple of years were going to be reconfiguring the museum so that it will probably tell a slightly different story than this one tells. Right now our museum tells a story that is pretty common to telling a general overview of westward expansion and the western part of the United States. What we want to do in our new exhibits is focus more on st. Louis role specifically in westward expansion so there will be a shift there. Another shift will be that when this museum was created back in 1976, it was more telling the story of kind of anglo white males going from the eastern part of the continent to the western part, which is a way that, in a sense, the way historians have looked at the westward expansion era, its been looked at in a different way and we start to see thats definitely telling part of the story. We want to tell the story of other cultural groups who went into the west, of native americans who were already living there of hispanic people who were already there and especially the story of st. Louis which already had existed for 40 years by the time the Louisiana Purchase was made when Thomas Jefferson authorized lewis and clark to go into the west. Immediately after the Louisiana Purchase, lewis and clark went on their famous journey of exploration out to the west coast and they opened a new era in American History where it was an idea that the government would have explorers, mostly people who were in the military, go into the west and try to identify the important things that were located in that area. It was something that the 18th century minds, that Thomas Jefferson felt was important. It became a legacy so even after jefferson was long gone, there were still groups of explorers who were officially going into the west. There was a whole section of the army, the topographical corps that was founded in the 1830s with the specific goal of trying to map and describe the entire geographical area of what the United States occurred to considered to be its territory and the exploration kept going on through the 1870s and 1880s, there were still explorers going out there trying to quantify and qualify everything that they were seeing. So whether that needed to happen before people went out to settle or before some of the exploitation of the west for commercial purposes took place i guess is an open question but it was the way that, as i say, the kind of the orderly scientific mind of the 18th century looked at things and they felt this is the logical first step, that we would send people out to explore. Unfortunately we dont have many items from these early explorers, none from lewis and clark. In our new museum we hope to show a number of artifacts that were used in the steven long expedition in 1818 and 1820 that are significant. But we do have a number of scientific instruments of the type that these explorers would have taken into the west with them, instruments like this transit that would have been used to help map the areas that they were seeing. We have other instruments that would help them to find their longitude, their place on the earth at any one time, and help them to actually draw the maps of where they were going, what they were seeing, that type of thing. But thats mostly what we have are the scientific instruments that would have been used by the explorers. In addition to actual government exploration, a lot of the west was actually explored by people who we call today mountain men people who went into the west to trap beaver fur, in particular to try to sell and try to make money for them. A lot of them were actually involved in large fur trading companies. They were employees but they stayed in the mountains, they lived out there year round. And they just by virtue of the fact that they were trying to find areas where beaver were located, went into areas that only native americans had seen before them. It just happened that by virtue of this commercial enterprise that these guys found probably more than the official voyages of exploration did that were funded by the government. This part of the museum tells the story of the overland pioneers who started to go west in large numbers in the early 1840s and continued right through the end of the 1860s, up until the time when the Transcontinental Railroad started to be built. The idea of going west during this time was an idea of trying to acquire free land, most of it in oregon, and then as time went on, of course, the finding of gold in california opened up a whole new chapter in the rush for people to get to the west. The idea in these early days was to get from an area like missouri all the way to the west coast. They were not really interested in settling in the areas in between. So they had to find first a way to get there and that ideal way was through south path in wyoming, and then the best conveyance to get them there, and that turned out to be a wagon like the one you can see over my shoulder. This type of wagon was usually built as a farm wagon but a lot of people either took the existing wagons they had on their farm or bought one like this one to go west in. Its really a lot smaller than a lot of people expect to see. A lot of people think of the famous conestoga wagons which are huge compared to this one but they were really too large to take over the terrain that the people were going to encounter. So it became kind of a system or a science going west. But you can kind of romanticize the trip because it was very dangerous. A lot of times in the hollywood movies we see them circling the wagons and the indians coming to pass. Very rarely, if ever did that happen. And there were very few deaths along the trail that had anything to do with the indians. The indians actually helped the pioneers more than hurting them. But the dangers came in first of all disease, which probably killed about 10 of the people who went west, mostly cholera and also things like drownings and accidental death by gunshot, being run over by a wagon. That happened to a lot of kids who were climbing on the wagon and fell off and the wheels would roll over them. So there was a real grim side to this mass migration. But it was really an unprecedented mass migration. Were talking about over 300,000 people during the period in question what kind of packed up everything and literally went west as forest greeley urged people to do. In our new exhibit we hope to take the covered wagon and tell the story more from the point of view of st. Louis because theres a lot of places in the west that tell the story of the overland pioneers with Visitors Centers and things like that on the oregon trail for you to learn about that. And we feel that people here should know how the overlanders got ready for their trip and a lot of them came through st. Louis and purchased things their wagons and their oxen and the food they were going to need and all their supplies. So thats what were going to dwell on a little more. Well still have the covered wagon on display and then well also have a lot of the items that they would take with them, real artifacts that people can look at, and talk about how they would pack a wagon and actually cram all these things in for this long journey that they take. By the 1850s, st. Louis was the third busiest port in the United States. And this levy which was just outside where the arch is today had hundreds of steamboats lined up side by side as a levy that were loading and unloading cargoes and passengers and taking goods to all different parts of the country. So its kind of an exciting part of the st. Louis story and one of the reasons why it was so central to the settlement of the west. The object that you see behind me is a pilots wheel. Its a real wheel. I guess you would call it a steering wheel, that was on a riverboat and a lot of people look at it and say its so huge, how did you steer . The way we have it displayed is a little it gives a false impression because where the hub of the wheel is would actually be where the floor was of the pilot. Only one half of the wheel stuck up above the level of the floor and it was still rather large. You were still grabbing on to the wheel pretty high up but you wouldnt see the entire wheel. Most of it was below the deck of the pilots house. Of course this recalls the days when mark twain was a riverboat pilot. He actually got his license here in st. Louis to be a pilot on the Mississippi River. Funny thing 1860s and 1870s the river transportation based here in st. Louis started to decline because railroads were taking up much of the slack of moving things from place to place. There were so many places in the American West that really were only accessible by railroad. The rivers were just too wild or went in the wrong direction. So there were some areas that could be still supplied by river but a lot was done by railroad after a certain point in time. St. Louis is still a port today, though. The difference is that its long series of barges that are taken up and down the river rather than dealing with the riverboats that they used to have, steam driven riverboats, and instead of having the port where it was which is in front of the arch on the levy, today the port of st. Louis stretches for 18 miles along the Mississippi River going on either side of the city center itself. So the port is kind of everywhere but where it was at the time and deals with a different type of boat and transport in the form of the barges than would have been dealt with back in the 19th century. The designer of the museum put the museum together in the early 1970s and he found when he created the layout that you see today, with the time rings up above and telling the chronological story, he sort of painted himself in a corner because where does it end . Of course it doesnt end anywhere. Time keeps marching on. Westward expansion era may have ended but United States history keeps going on and thats one reason why at the back of the museum theres pictures of things like the moonwalk and the atomic bomb going off and all those kinds of things, to show that history didnt stop. The main thing though, was what to do with the back wall, and it was his wife who actually came up with the solution to that problem, which was to they thought they could commemorate the lewis and clark trail and the idea that its still there today so if you want to go out and paddle or walk or drive the lewis and clark trail, you can still do that. So they sent a photographer out along the trail to take images during the same seasons that the explorers really would have been there and thats what resulted in these floortoceiling murals that you see here at the very back of the museum. So the lewis and clark trail itself and the west itself becomes kind of the alpha and the omega. Its what the explorers first saw when they went out there and its also what you can still see today. Tonights look at the people, places and events of westward expansion is part of cspans cities tour where we travel across the country highlighting the literary life and history of each city we visit. You can see more at cspan. Org. Click on the series tab, then click the link for cspan cities tour. Pompeys pillar is a sand stone rock formation in montana. Cspan took a tour of the Pompeys Pillar National Historic landmark. The natives have engraved on the face of this rock the figures of animals near which i marked my name and the day of the month and year. This morning, were going to walk up pompeys national monument, talk a little bit about the history of the site. Why is this place so important to the history not only of the United States but also the history of yellow stone county, montana, as well as the west in general. What i often tell students that come here, i want people to think about what was it like 200 years ago. Clark and his party are coming down the Yellow Stone River hoping to meet up with lewis and as theyre coming down the riv theyre having to stop at various intervals. What are they stopping for . Theyre stopping to hunt to gather food. Theyre stopping because. Immense herds of Buffalo Crossing the river and when i talk immense, im talking about herds of buffalo so large, they would stop for four to six hours for the buffalo to cross the river. Another reason they would stop is simply partly just curiosity and the natural intent of an explorer which is to look at the land and see the land. So as we think about all those things, and as we tell the story today, clark is coming down the yellow stone and that morning they had gotten up, they had hunted, they had seen immense herds of buffalo and he decides to get off the river and walk for a while and see this, this large sand stone outcrop here and i think its just naturally part of Human Interest to want to come to something large climb up on top of it and look around and thats exactly what he did. As part of an explorer, somebody looking to traverse the west, to create maps, to learn about things that the landscape the natural history, he ascends the pillar, goes up on top looks around triangulates his position, comes back and on his way down he leaves his mark, right over here, his signature thus leaving behind the only remaining onsite physical evidence of the entire lewis and Clark Expedition. This signature represents not just the visit of clark but i think of it as signifying the start of something a legacy that had actually in some ways been here before him. Clarks signature on july 25 1806, and then subsequently written about and chronicled in his journals led a lot of folks who traveled across the west to come to this rock, mark their names as well as drawings, inscriptions, all kinds of things, all over the rock. As you look from his signature directly to the left you can see all of these different signatures and marks and names and they cover the entire rock so throughout all along Pompeys Pillar are these signatures, hundreds of them starting off with the explorers and going on to the homesteaders traveling to the modern era, folks that tilled the land for agriculture. And im sure we would probably find some local High School Classes names on here from the 1960s to 1970s. Pompeys pillar tells a story that continues on today with this legacy of all these people had a have passed by so each time a visitor comes here, given that they can no longer write on the rock, they leave that legacy, too. But as i mentioned that legacy started before clark so if you look at the rock, you can see where there are markings on the rock in a reddish hue. Those are native american pictographs and petroglyphs. Ill explain why there was a significance to the site culturally as well as given the great and immense hunting available to the native americans that lived here and used the area. This rock i ascended and from its top had a most extensive view in every direction. After satisfying myself sufficiently in this delightful prospect of the extensive country around and the immense herds of elk and buffalo i ascended on. We are standing on the top of pom peas pillar national monument. We are able to tell a story over 200 years by standing in one spot. What is also remarkable is being able to stand here and see the landmarks and the landscape for what it was 200 years ago but also for what it is today. The first thing is the animals. When clark was here 200 years ago, this landscape was covered with buffalo elk antelope, all kind of different species who have been here and with them the same predators weve read of many times kouyate mountain lions and the wolf. You would ask why are those animals here . As you look at the cliff formation behind me, you see the natural break. This was a funnel. These rams run all the way to billings and quite a distance to the east so here we have a natural break where herds of buffalo, elk,th other animals would have been able to cross and feed. Native americans had this large platform to stand upon and use both for cultural assemblies and hunting. If you think about the number of animals that would have been in this area on a regular basis so when we think about that and think about the changes because the buffalo herds arent here anymore. There are still some elk seen. The big horn sheep seen by clark on the cliffs are no longer here. We still have a few mountain lions hanging out in the area and coyotes wander around. But the landmarks are still here and they tell the story of the west. Pompeys pillar is one of those rare places you can tell an entire story of our countrys west from one place. More now about the core of discovery expedition led by william lark and clark and mary wether lewis. Cspans American History tour spoke to Stephanie Ambrose tubbs. I would say that some of the biggest misconceptions about the lewis and Clark Expedition are that it was just a lark or a big family camping trip. Part of that is because they had a dog with them. They had an African American slave with them and they also had a young indian woman so that kind of makes you feel like well this is just a big large family but actually it was a military expedition and it was sent by Thomas Jefferson to survey what was outside of what was then the United States so they started at st. Louis and they went all the way to astoria, oregon, which at that time was just the Louisiana Purchase, basically. And the Louisiana Purchase pretty much stopped where they started getting into the mountains and thats when they started meeting with tribes that they really didnt know were out there so they were doing a survey for jefferson is what their mission was. It would have been 1803 to 1806 were the years that they did the expedition. There were many years in preparation for it but we call 1803 to 1806 the years of the expedition. Jefferson picked mary wether lewis because he was his private secretary when he was president and lewis picked William Clark because they worked together and they had become friends. I believe the line he United States used was i would prefer no one else other than you to be on the expedition with me. Clark was always called captain so in lewis mind he was the copartner. There was no distinction in rank. Their first months, they were trying to make sure that the group they got together, the 30 or so men, were up to the task so they were trying to enforce military order to teach them what they needed to know to get the boats going up the river. They also wanted to make sure that there were no gentleman sons, they wanted them to be fit, single, young men, good hunters. They started there were some lets just say, some indiscretions in the beginning. Some of them would involve getting into the whiskey. They brought whiskey with them as part of the rations of the day. At that time, the military officers would give little thimblefuls to the men so there was a big storage keg of whiskey and some of the men got into that and that would cause disruption in the ranks. And so they would discipline them and one of the ways they would discipline them was have the men do a Court Martial and the men would decide who was guilty so that was another way of getting the men together as a unit and saying we will enforce discipline and one of the things they did was called the gauntlet where they would have the men line up on either side, have men shirtless run down and these men would be whipping them with rods from their rifle or sticks as they went by and another way was just lashes well laid on, as they said. But because lewis and clark had firm disciplinary actions to kind of counteract that, that was all settled. By the time they took off from st. Louis, things were in working order and everybody respected both captains so their experience in montana, it was either feast or famine. When they were on the plains around the b bison they would eat pounds of meat a day but they were burning it off. I think they looked more like runners. But their experience in montana then they started getting towards the mountains, towards this area and hitting the mountains meant its not going to be as easy as it had been even though they were poling up river, they realized we have to transport all this stuff over the mountains in order to find that Northwest Passage which people say they never did find the Northwest Passage but they did find the drainage of the columbia and they were able to get on to the columbia and proceed to the ocean. The gates of the oceans, when lewis got here it must have been late in the evening because he said everything wore a dark and gloomy aspect. It might have been that it had just rained and the rocks would have looked a lot darker and they were looking for a place to set up camp but they couldnt find sufficient ground space for all the men to set up their tents so they finally we believe got on an island at the mouth of this canyon and thats where they were able to stop for the night. We joke that he came to the gates of the mountains and it was a dark and gloomy aspect but its a beautiful place and its gorgeous. So its the mountains and they realized there goes all the game and we have to rely on our indian friends to help us find the meat and find the trail and thats what both the lemi shashomy and nes purse were very instrumental in helping them. They met sacagawea in president day north dakota at a place called the knife river villages and she had been a lemi shashoney girl who was kidnapped and brought to the villages where she was traded or bought by a french trapper named toussaint shashno. So she was married to a french trapper when lewis and clark came through and since they were looking for translators and people to interpret, they looked at him and looked at her as equal of being their interpreters as they traveled up the river and she would have been she delivered her son Jean Baptiste shashno february 11, 1905, and he was 3 months old and she carried him on her back the whole way. A lot of people, especially when it comes to having this young native American Indian woman with them, a lot of times in American History we condense things down to the simplest element and a lot of people were raised thinking shes the one that pointed the way she brought these white guys. Well, what happened was she was along for the journey and by her sheer presence the other Indian Tribes would see her and the baby and theyd see the dog and say this is really not a war party. These people are doing something else, theyre not coming here to start fights. So just by her physical presence she was kind of a token of peace. And then she there was a place over by bozeman where she identified a pass that her people used and she was able to say, this is the way we went, and captain clark calls her my pilot at that point so there are instances where she recognized land forms and was able to say to the captains im recognizing this were in the land of my homeland. Another place is down by Beaver Head Rock so i like to say that her intelligence and her worthiness to the expedition was based on the fact that she paid close attention when they were sitting around the camp fire with her people and they would be talking about, well were going to go to where the bison are now and we go by this route that goes by a big rock that looks like a beavers head. So her she could have really been almost a cartographer in her own right because she knew the stories and her people would travel seasonally and they moved around according to where their food source would be and when she got the to the man dan, that was a whole nother lesson for her because they stayed put they remember farmers agrayerians and the women raised the crop so she knew a lot about plants from them so here worthiness is more complicated than people think. Misconceptions around lewis and clark is that they were friendly and they always got along and they were brothers in arms and always united. I think there were time when lewis really tested the friendship of clark because he was kind of the more moody one and clark was more the glue that held the expedition together. Oftentimes lewis would be on the shore gathering specimens or walking with his dog and hunting whereas clark was with the men on the boat with the daytoday orders and keeping them in proper form and all those kind of things so these guys were really working hard and also sacagawea was working hard. They were trying to move all this equipment all these boats up the river to find the Northwest Passage and they were trying to do a job that one of the most brilliant leaders in our history it given them, had hand picked basically these people to do it so they really did not want to let anybody down and i think that added to their cohesiveness. There was maybe one guy who left the expedition. He went awol. But the rest of them, they were relying on each other and they really believed that if they remained a core, a unit, that they would come home fine and they would get that land grant and they would be able to tell all these great stories. The Important Role that lewis and clark played in u. S. History was that they came out here and they told jefferson what was out here. They were the surveyors. They were the ones that took the notes, that gathered the specimens, that tried to keep a list of the languages the vocabularies of the native americans. They really were citizen scientists sent out to just get a count of everything that they saw and some things, like i said, the bibison you couldnt even count because there were so many of them but they wanted to give their report to jefferson so he could say heres what were going to encounter as our generations fill up the canvas. Heres whats out there, this amazing wealth resource and they were the ones that brought it back they brought the report back and told jefferson, that purchase was worth it. Tonights look at the people, places and events of westward expansion is part of cspans cities tour where we travel across the country heigl highlighting the literary life and history of each city we visit. You can see more at cspan. Org, click on the series tab and click the link for cspan cities tour. Our American History tour on westward expansion continues here on cspan. In 1869, Railroad Tycoon Leland Stanford drove the ceremonial final spike into the ground to complete the first Transcontinental Railroad. The golden spike as it was known, was struck outside ogden utah. Next, a visit to the golden spike National Historic site. Were at Promontory Summit utah golden spike National Historic site, walking over to where the Transcontinental Railroad was completed. This spot right here marked by the lower wood tie is within inches of where the original ceremony was held on may 10, 1869. Included on this tie is a plaque that lists many of the dignitaries from that company the Central Pacific, in particular including Leland Stanfords name and the big four are all marked there. Another thing you can see here at the site is a connection with the resources that would have been available to the two companies building the railroad. Weve actually mocked up everything to try to make it as authentic as possible. If you look on the west side youre going to see precut ties. The Central Pacific had plenty of wood in the sierranevadas and had saw mills and cut all their ties brought them down from the mountains. Whereas the Union Pacific from the east had to hand cut their ties wherever they could find wood. Not a lot available in many of the areas so they would split them and you can see them locked up right here, how they would cut them and bring them out when they could. The Transcontinental Railroad was happening at the end of the victorian age as you were going into the Industrial Age and it was a perfect time for the United States because when that Transcontinental Railroad was completed, it made a major impact in the Industrial Development of this nation. The complete construction took just over it was about 6 1 2 years, so from 1862 to 1869. Time period just before they started building the Transcontinental Railroad would have been when a lot of people were coming out after the gold rush, silver rush was really taking off. We were also in the middle of the civil war when the act was signed to start this project. Abraham lincoln really wanted to have access to all the materials that were available in the sierranevadas including that gold and silver and connect the new states that had just been made to the United States. So he chose that time to complete the act and Start Building the Transcontinental Railroad. Obviously in the middle of the war, defense of the country was a big kind of major factor that was making the decision. They wanted to be able to get troops across the country in a quicker period. They also wanted to cut the time of shipping goods. The raw goods that would be made in the factories back east and the finished goods that would go over to the new states out in the west so four to six months around the horn, slipping all the way down around south america, was hopefully going to be cut to about two weeks and that was lincolns goal, to get troops across the country in two weeks and it ended up that it was seven to 10 days that they were able to get things across the country once once it was completed. The two companies that started building the Transcontinental Railroad were the Central Pacific Railroad Company that started in sacramento, california, and the Union Pacific Railroad Company that started in omaha, nebraska. One of the problems the whole time is the companies were building before they go the paid. So they were almost always in debt always worrying about money. The other problem was resources. Huge problem with resources. If youve ever traveled across wyoming and nebraska theres not a lot of wood and if you look underneath the rails wooden ties had to be placed all along the route just for the railroad. You also would have to build buildings for water towers or just the infrastructure of operating the railroad all across the country. Another huge problem, because they were in the civil war, it was finding manpower to building the railroad and the end of the civil war actually was a huge help for the Railroad Companies because you had all these veterans from the war looking for a way to provide for their lives, their livelihood, and there was a ready employer in the Railroad Companies. Now, for the Central Pacific this was even a bigger concern because a lot of times especially early on in the building of the railroad, a lot of their workers would just come on long enough to obtain money to go and mine in the gold or the silver fields or mines. So thats actually why the chinese were eventually brought on as an experiment. They just brought on 50 Chinese Workers initially to test them out. There was a lot of doubts because of the stature. They didnt think theyd be able to withstand the 10 to 12 hour days six days a week. There was all the a lot of criticism and i guess you could say racism against the chinese but eventually they overcame all those doubts and did a fantastic job. So well, in fact that over 11,000 chinese were employed by the end of the Transcontinental Railroad between the two companies. Both companies as they approached each other were being paid land grants and government bonds to build and they didnt want to give up ground to each other so instead of coming together and giving up and finding out where they would meet, they continued to build past one another until the federal government told them they wouldnt pay them anymore until they figure out where they would meet so thats when they selected the spot where were standing right beside and it gave both the companies 30 miles of track they had to finish in the last month. So youre looking down over some of the wetlands of the Great Salt Lake. Two major factors influenced the path across the whole route. One was finding fresh water available every 15 to 30 miles to refill the tanks that would supply the water for the boilers on the steam loc motives. Another thing is they needed to stay under the 2 grade. As they were trying to find their way through utah, one of the challenges they faced is there was the large saltwater lake, wouldnt allow any fresh water, but they had to find a path around it. And they were thinking about going right through the wet land area but one of the engineers brought brought up what if the lake level rises so they decided to come up on the foothills north of the lake, even though that would present more challenges with the grading, but to stay away from the lake and prevent flooding and damaging the railroad. Another thing you can see from the site is if you look down just below us you can see the other grade. I mentioned earlier that the two companies building across the country passed each other through utah with grade work because they didnt want to give up money that the federal government was providing so done below us is the Union Pacific grade that would have been abandoned less than a year after the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad when they sold their rights to the Central Pacific Railroad Company. Because the Central Pacific had worked through utah a lot longer, they had a Higher Quality grade so when they bought the rights from the Union Pacific, they switched over to their grade. Thats what were standing on. Were coming up to the last cut made by the Union Pacific in their proven to Promontory Summit value right here. In just a minute well be able to look down and you can actually see, in order to get through different elevation changes, they would cut through the rock and blast with black powder making these channels that they could actually build the railroad through. Now, the work youre seeing, these berms or hills up on the far side of this cut is from the 1860s. This is actually rock that was stacked up and you can actually see they even kind of put some bigger rocks to act as a wall, retaining wall, to keep that from collapsing down into the cut. And so its pretty neat. You can see work that has lasted almost 150 years now. As they approached the actual ceremony and they figured out the spot here at Promontory Summit, a lot of people were interested in knowing when they were complete and they actually had a lot of reporters from all over the country that came out with the dignitaries from the two companies. A lot of individuals from the other companies that would connect with the main line and benefit with their businesses from that and the day that was set for the completion when the federal government made the two Companies Set when they would finish and where was may 8. We hold our anniversary every year on may 10 and that is because there was a delay on the Union Pacific getting out here so they were not able to hold the ceremony until that day. When they actually held the ceremony, one of the neat parts of the story they did have the ceremonial spikes which one of them gives us our name. They had four ceremonial spikes including two solid gold a solid silver and the arizona spike which was an iron, silver and gold spike. And because theyre a precious metal they could not drive the spikes. They would have to predrill holes just like you see here on site and place those precious metal spikes into these holes. We often are asked where the gold spike was. We actually dont know which position the gold spike would have held. They would have placed those in as part of the ceremony, the dignitaries placed them in and tapped them in as part of the ceremony. But then they removed all that and there was a last spike that was driven so when you hear the driving of the last spike, it wasnt the gold spike, it was a regular iron spike that was linked up to the telegraph. They tied the telegraph wires around the spike and the hammer so when they drove it in it sent a broadcast live coverage across the country and actually started celebrations all throughout the nation. During the ceremony, one of the famous pictures you often see is the champagne photo. For that photo, there were two locomotives here on site and we have replicas of those two engines that operate on a daily basis throughout our summer season. Theyre known the Central Pacific jupiter and Union Pacific 119. Those two locomotives have become two of the most famous locomotives in american railroading so being able to run those is a cool way to commemorate that. After the ceremony, a lot of pictures were taken and then the operation of the railroad became huge throughout the country. Because they were trying to increase time and efficiency within these companies them, eventually the line that was passing through this area was bypassed. They built a trestle bridge and causeway from the nevadautah border straight across the point of the Promontory Mountains that are just behind us straight into ogden. That cut about 80 miles of extra travel time, money, all of that, off of the operation of that transcontinental line. Ogden became a huge hub for transporting troops and materials and supplies all across the country and would just have trains every hour coming in just unloading huge amounts of supplies or people and it became a major city, major thoroughfare for moving across the country. We continue our look at westward expansion here on cspan. The National Historic trails Interpretive Center tries to recreate the experience of the settlers who traveled the four historic routes that pass through casper wyoming. During the 19th century, migrants on the oregon trail, the mormon trail, the pony express and the california trail traveled through casper on their way to the pacific coast. We are here at the National Historic trails Interpretive Center. The trails center addresses the oregon trail, the mormon trail california trail and the pony express trail. Didnt matter twr why you were going west didnt matter which trail you were on. If you were going west, you had to come through casper, wyoming because south pass is the only pass in the rollercoaster Rocky Mountains that allows a wagon to be able to transverse that. Consequently, all the trails come through casper, wyoming. These early explorers, basically you see the outline of the state of wyoming. This square basically shows south pass whether youre going to the Great Salt Lake, whether youre going to the oregon territory for free land or whether youre going to california for gold. This represents some of the early explorers. The best known explorer in wyoming is none other than jim bridger. He wasnt that well traveled but he did a great amount of documentation in his diary. He was the first white man, we believe, to have discovered the Great Salt Lake. Its his diaries that the mormons would later follow to the Great Salt Lake. When you compare jim bridger to another very famous explorer, john c. Fremont when you compare his travels with some of the other explorers, you can see how some were very well traveled and some just stuck to certain areas but theyre all important to the story of the trails west and why people came west and these diaries that will be followed basically become the road maps for all of these trails down the way. At the oregon trail gallery youll experience crossing the great flat river. We have just crossed the river in between fort laramie and red buttes here at casper. We would travel on to Independence Rock trying to get to Independence Rock by the fourth of july, hence the name, Independence Rock. And again, we must travel through south pass with those wagons in order to successful transverse the Rocky Mountains. Oregon trail starts in about 1840 with just a few travelers and by 1870, 100,000 travelers have been on the oregon trail. If you could only imagine your father coming home and saying, ive decided were going west to oregon, please go upstairs, pack all of your provisions that you can take in one suitcase. This is an interactive exhibit that our children will use. They have to decide what theyre going to take on the trail and what they will leave behind. Not everything fits so they have to make a decision as to what will fit in the trunk and what will not fit and what theyll have to leave behind. Dad would say, tell all of your friends, all of your relatives goodbye, we are leaving at sunup in the morning and we will not be back. Youll probably never see them again and oh by the way, the trail is 2,000 miles long and well be walking the whole distance. Weve now moved on to the mormon gallery. This tells the story of the mormon migration who left in a view illinois, and traveled to the Great Salt Lake. This is an example of a Rhode Islander which was an accurate measurement of the distance traveled by rotation of the wheel. Prior to the mormon invention of the Rhode Islander, a small child would be assigned to walk next to the wheel with a handkerchief tied next to the wheel and they would have to count the revolutions as they watched the wheel make one revolutions and that was no small task for in the journey to the Great Salt Lake this wagon would have made 371,160 revolutions so the Rhode Islander was a much welcome invention. A large portion of the mormon population is living in navu, illinois and theyre basically labeled criminals and told to get out of town overnight starting a large migration in a short amount of time. The mormon trail basically begins in 1846 and on up through the 18 70s until Salt Lake City becomes the great mormon city that it is today. And theyre basically following the journal diaries and the maps created by jim bridger. They will stop along the way several places thinking that they have found the ideal place just east of casper here. They established a camp and thought that that was going to be where they would end up but they couldnt find enough water and then continued on to the Great Salt Lake. A great many of the mormons could not afford a wagon and a team. Consequently, the church encouraged mormons to travel to their new Promised Land which was the salt lake and the church would loan a hand cart to a family and then when the family got to the salt lake and got reestablished, they would pay back the church for the hand cart which would then be used to further others coming down the trail. This wagon cart had to be pulled at a particular speed in order to make 15 miles a day. If you went too slow, you would run out of groceries and perish because theres no Grocery Stores along the trail. You had to pick up the pace so that you got into the yellow. At this steady walking pace you could make 15 miles a day which was crucial to you getting to where you needed to be before the winter storms. If you went too fast, you would simply die of exhaustion. The meager rations that you are carrying will not replace the energy that youre expending and you will die of exhaustion on the trail. Chronologically we have now moved to the california trails. California trails, of course tells the story of the gold rush to california. The now, the newspapers exaggerated the story of gold at sutters creek, showing pictures such as this, where you could pick up a fivepound rock of solid gold, put it in your pocket and live happily ever after. Those stories existed but they were rare. The majority of the miners who went to california in fact died broke. The real stories were the people that mined the miners, selling them picks and shovels and wheelbarrows and clothing and supplies which were very expensive at the time. There were also stories of scams where you could get to california in a real hurry using such things as air balloon air ships and wind wagons which didnt exist but you could buy a ticket to get to california and show up at the appointed time to catch the air ship or wind wag wagon and they did not exist and youd be holding a worthless ticket. During the course of the travels down the trail, a lot of times your animals, if you were traveling on the trail, your animals would wear out and you would lighten the load. You would throw heavy things out like anvils and stoves and extra wheels just to simply lighten the load and spare the animals the misery of pulling this wagon loaded down. Weve now moved on to the pony express trail. In addition to the pony express delivering mail, which well talk about in a moment, there were stage lines operated by the pony express companies wells fargo and russell majors and waddle. The wagon that you see is called a stage coach and its basically pulled by multiple teams over the same trail day after day resulting in a lot of dust kicked up. That dust would roll into the wagon. There were large leather curtains above each of the windows to keep the dust out but if you chose to roll the curtain down to keep the dust out you would raise the temperature in the coach by 20 degrees. The coach would be occupied by nine occupants. It seems rather small but the average man of the time period stood about 56 and weighed 120 pound. The average woman of the time period stands 54 and weighs about 90 pounds, hence, there would be enough room. The very last seat actually folds up in the door so when you pull the door shut, the seat folds down out of the door giving the ninth passenger his seat. You could only imagine the people that you might be traveling with, a man smoking a big cigar, a woman wearing too much perfume children throwing up in the coach, all those sights and smells as you bust across the prairie with a great amount of dust rolling into the windows on a hot day. This is the other portion of the pony express trail. The main purpose of the trail was the delivery of mail from st. Joseph, missouri to sacramento, california. We oftentimes get the wrong impression from television and movies that a rider rode the entire distance which is not true. As you see on the map there are lots of little stops and starts. There were approximately 25 home stations and 165 swing stations. A swing station is where a rider would simply change his tired horse for a fresh horse and gallop on to the next swing he would reach a home station where he would spend the evening and the next morning he would catch the mail coming from the opposite direction and he would head back to his other home station. One rider would do this live in the next one would do this loop and so on. That is how mail was delivered in 10 days. The pony express lasted only a little over a year. That was due to economic reasons. It was expensive to operate the pony express. It was a dangerous job. This was an advertisement from a newspaper. The pony e