The dedisergses at the time. Their heart strings were being pulled with their families needing them back home. Deserters would be sometimes shot and the punishment and there were several occurrences of this happening. At the same time less miss rabbles came les miss miserables came out in book form. Were marking the civil war with the series and the people who shaped the era ear on American History tv on cspan 3. Welcome to American History tvs special look at the people and places that our cspan city tour producers visited in 2014. With the help of our cable partner, over the next 90 minutes whether he take you across the country. We begin in a small town in the far northeastern tip of Washington State called Point Roberts. You got your stuff . Maybe. There is salt and pepper there. Were the olson family. We lived in Point Roberts for 20 years. Basically, Point Roberts is a five square mile peninsula of american territory tucked underneath canada. To get here from anywhere in the United States, you have to cross the border twice to get here from canada you have to cross the border one. Point roberts is an oddity of geography. It is an american exclave. I think someone called it a fingernail sticking out of canada that accidently crosses the 49th parallel. It is a small community. I think it is about five or six square miles. It is only about 1,200 people, maybe 1,300 people. Schooling is kindergarten through three then four through 12 they go cross two borders. He gets up in the morning and he eats breakfast like most people and then he gets on the bus. He crosses the border and drives into canada. They cross the border and he goes to school. The upper grades Junior High School and High School Kids have to travel all the way to blain washington which is about 40 miles by car to go to school. What that means is they have to cross the International Border four times each day. They have to come out of Point Roberts into canada drive to blaine and go into the United States cross the border and when they go home they have to repeat the same process. There is a lot of crossing of borders for school kids. It is something they have been doing for many years so they it worked pretty well and the buses get processed very quickly so it not a lot of hassle but it is just inconvenient. There is not enough economy in Point Roberts to build facilities like schools that you need for the small u. S. Population that lives there permanently. The early inhabitance here were native inld indians and they came here during the Summer Season to fish for salmon and clams. They would take them home in the winner. When captain vancouver came here with the British Expedition he mentioned in his journey there was an abandoned Indian Village the whole west coast was being explored by the spanish and the british. Kind of at the same time. I believe history has shown the spanish expedition and the British Expedition met at Point Roberts at one point. Point roberts was named after captain vancouvers good friend captain henry roberts. Henry roberts was supposed to lead the expedition but when he was preparing the ships he was sent to the west indies and he developed yellow fever and he died there. The 49th parallel was drawn from the rocky mountainings to the east coast. It is called the oregon country and british subjects and american subjects lived here. The or treaty was drawn in 1846. What that treaty did was extended the canadianu. S. Boundary from the Rocky Mountains west to the pacific. They simply followed the 49th parallel. They thought it was you could just draw a 49th parallel and everything above would be canada and below would be the United States but there was this thing stick down that got crossed as well. When they realized this then it became a question of trying to figure out what could be done. Should this remain american territory . The u. S. Is not in the business of ceding territory so you just live with it and you accept the fact that you have this odd u. S. Land that should be in canada that the americans continue to hold and they do to the present day. The major economy of Point Roberts was fishing. Washington state has made a lot of tax money over salmon over the last couple of years. The georgia barker company. We all know salmon have been overfished. The demise of the canneries when they closed down, a lot of people had to move away for employment. As far as a business space, it is mail order, gas and dairy. Most of our population is self employed or retired. There is not a lot of employment opportunity. People come to Point Roberts for a quiet life or they come for dairy, gas, and par cell parcel services. Lines are the biggest headaches. Lines at the post office, lines at the gas station, lines at the border. Waiting in line is the biggest headache living in appointment roberts. If you have to wait in line to get in here, you have to wait in line to send anything out of here, you have to wait in line to get out of here. Other than it is a nice place to live. The population is really small and the place gets busy in the summertime because canadians come down. Other times of the year, it is a very much canadian destination because it is close to vancouver and prices are less for all kinds of items. There are things there that they cant find in vancouver. So canadians like to come down and shop and do other things. Also, there is a fair amount of canadians that live down there maybe not on a permanent basis but own property and they go down in the summertime because it is very nice. There is a nice marina there. A lot of parkland and the property prices are less expense iexpensive than eequivalent lant property in the vancouver area to the north. Im joan and i own and operate brewsters fine food which is a restaurant and fine country store. There are close to 20 businesses in Point Roberts. The business has changed over time. When i opened in 1996, the year after i opened the Canadian Dollar went down to 62 cents on the dollar. That was my first big challenge. After 2001 we had heightened security at the border and that was our second big challenge. Right after september 11, the border closed and that was a huge problem for truck Commerce People going to school. That didnt last for more than twothirds of the day but it opened in a very kind of tentive way so that cars are being checked carefully and people who are used to crossing with very little questioning or anything like that found themselves heavily interrogated and that this was a huge inconvenience for people at Point Roberts because they cross the border all the time. Prior to 2001, i could bring goods in from canada easily but now there is a considerable amount of paperwork required. I just eliminated canadian suppliers and i buy from bellingham or seattle. There was a fear factor at that point where people were concerned about coming across the border so it definitely affected our canadian traffic across. On the other hand what it has done keeping people in the Point Roberts an maybe they dont go out of the community to dine like they did prior to 2001. The way that canadians are welcomed in Point Roberts is very typical, i think of the canadianu. S. Relationship. People are proud of the fact that merchants will take both canadian and u. S. Money. Canadians are so welcome there. They are seen as almost like residents, part of our Point Roberts society and our culture. This idea of being a foreigner in Point Roberts is probably much less of an idea that you find even in bellingham or seattle. Much of the border is just a ditch. There will be a street on the american side that runs along parallel to the border and you look across the ditch and you will see a similar street on the canadian side and that is the border. Over the years there has been talk about of building, not like a wall like you think on the mexican border. What they have talked about on the canadianu. S. Border is some kind of a fence that would slow people down who typically, for example, some of the drug runners and smugglers who have been going back and forth across that border for generations. What they have said particularly on the american side is maybe we should put something that slows them down, maybe a barbed wire fence or a small fence that they at least have to jump over arrest crawl under it that would give the Border Patrol a chance to catch these people. I dont think it will happen. Canada and the United States have the longest undefended boarder in the world and there is pride in that. Any kind of idea of putting a fence
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