the civil war is over survivors head out across the frontier a vast wilderness separates east and west veterans become railway men Cowboys settlers conquering nature they'll unite the continent their mission to tame the Wild West we are pioneers we fight for freedom dreams into the truth our struggles 1865 the Great Plains we're thirty million Buffalo Rome vast untouched a wilderness dividing America crossing the continent takes six months 20,000 died on wagon trains by ship it's an eighteen thousand mile journey around South America to conquer the wilderness and unite east and west President Lincoln Greenlight's a Transcontinental Railroad 2,000 miles long it will transform the nation triggering a tidal wave of settlement across the Great Plains the railroads were vital to the expansion 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 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 crumpled like tinfoil over the last four million years the Sierra Nevada mountains climb more than two miles high they're still growing 13 feet in a thousand years one day they could rival the Himalayas only a madman dream of running a railroad of Frost mountains like this they don't call him crazy Judah for nothing obsessed with the railroad he sees away through one down boy Theodore Judah makes 23 trips into the peaks pick that boy plodding a path across ridges and through mountain summits building it will be the engineering challenge of the century this is the most magnificent project ever conceived and enterprise more important to the people of the United States than any other railroad will be built and I will have something to do with him 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 two billion in modern money the government doesn't have enough cash it pays the companies in federal land they must finish in 15 years or lose everything we have learned in this country that should 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 hundred and twenty acres of federal land I'll end up owning an area the size of Texas first they must conquer the Donner Pass 7500 feet up the highest on judah's route cursed by 30 feet of snow each winter avalanches tragedy here just 20 years earlier the Donner Party became trapped in the snow and hate each other now Judah's railroad cuts right through the mountain one thousand six hundred and forty nine 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 and get Americans across the continent the railroad magnates said the Chinese built the Great Wall didn't they let's bring the Chinese and to do this work over ten thousand Chinese laborers earn less and do the deadliest jobs 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 Hong Lei whoa swaps a life of poverty in Canton for the back-breaking work on a railroad gang Hong Lei whoa must cut through granite so tough a rock the size of a big toe will support a 50 ton locomotive progress slows two 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 Houghton 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 Houghton gets hazard pay $4,000 a month in modern money after three months in the mountains he turns to drink leaving the night road to Chinese men like Hong Lei whoa Irish Cruise won't touch it dead nation creates temperatures of nine thousand degrees as hot as the surface of the Sun so soon nagoya an estimated 1,500 Chinese died in explosions and rockslides hyung lei whoa 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 four hundred 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 the folks who had once had to risk everything in a wagon train that is eliminated you can now can 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 the Great Planes conquered by steel and steel the Transcontinental Railroad threads a thin line of civilization through the wilderness people follow in just one year 40,000 settlers moved 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 homes 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 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 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 degrees summers spark prairie fires trees can't survive the drought in 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 they often had insects they invited snakes it was well pretty much like living in a burrow in the ground 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 Madi it's a price worth paying 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 obligor face daily tests of their faith with no mountains to stop the wind the Great Plains are a breeding ground for massive thunderstorms 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 go too far honey the obligatory Doh alley more twisters hit this region than anywhere else on earth over 400 touchdown every year 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 oblongata her down in their heavy sod house clinging to their newfound independence I think that we're a nation of people descended from Tuffle coots and Tuffle 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 ahh blinkers faced 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 a local vegetation they release pheromones that signal it's time to move on they grow long wings swarms had east on the wind they join up over the Great Plains and become a play in 1874 they devour half of the crops in the West three trillion locusts half a mile high 100 miles wide 1,000 miles long as big as Colorado they block out the Sun agricultural Armageddon - men like Uriah the locusts are the wrath of God by 1892 half the population of western Nebraska goes back east Uriah stays 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 things 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 it's 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 greengold a magnet for scandinavian woods now between 1825 and 1925 a third of Norway's entire population comes to America including Nils Hagen the pay was $3 a day you had to have a good pair of driving boots well cocked 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 get 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 in 1892 two 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 thirty million Buffalo herds up to 25 miles long race to summer breeding grounds collision course with the modern world the railroad brings a new kind of hunter to the Great Plains driven by profit fresh from the carnage of the Civil War two million rifles are in circulation over a million veterans trained to use them have a new target in their sights Frank Meir Civil War vet Buffalo hunter 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 you could kill him what they brought was yours in a walking gold pieces hunters harvest the Buffalo for its high in 1872 they shipped over 1 million out of Kansas alone worth $3 a piece back east on a good day mayor 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 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 the Buffalo were our strength from whence we came and at whose breasts we suck as babies all our lives Black Elk is 6 years old when the railroad arrives unlike the white hunters his people waste none of their kill sinews become bowstrings bones our cups and spoons skin is clothing teepees and coffins Native Americans in 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 transformed the life of the Plains Indian they become expert horseman the battle cry went up okay 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 punks 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 thirty million are killed in little over a decade after hunters take the hides train loads of men arrived 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 my great-great grandmother grandma big Eagle was alive when when buffalo hunting ended they weren't just saying goodbye to a kind of a foodstuff they were saying goodbye to a way of being in the world and I think for them to look back on that was just unspeakable 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 the last of the great frontiersman the cowboy 1865 the civil war leaves cities on the eastern seaboard stripped of resources the country's booming population needs food in Texas over six million cattle roam wild worth four dollars a head here but back east there were 40 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 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 his Teddy blue Abbott 23 year old Teddy blue is the son of a Nebraska homesteader my father wanted to tie me down and make a farmer outta me never I ran away from home to become a cowboy the cowboy mentality it's the spirit of individuals I have a communion with the land with my horse it symbolizes and resistance to Authority Teddy blue is one of 35,000 Cowboys who will drive cattle to the railroad in Kansas standing in their way a thousand miles of untamed west unforgiving terrain and gangs of rustlers for only $1 a day Cowboys must be skilled horseman and cattle Wranglers the lasso dates back to the ancient Egyptians Mexican ranchers have been using them for centuries and pass their skills onto Cowboys north of the border cattle brought over by the Spanish in 1493 have bred with settlers cows from England creating a new breed the Texas Longhorn after centuries roaming the plains they're wild and easily spooked teddy blue here's what every cowboy dreads stampede over four cattle drives teddy blueberries three pounds 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 that loves it's his first chance to be judged for his skills not just the color of his skin the guys on the team are as broad minded as the plains it's every queen for himself and every friend for each other to be in many of the cowboys to the surprise of most of us happen to be african-american black people had the dream of conquering the imagination just like white people do the West that's wild lawless with herds worth up to 200 thousand dollars Cowboys guard the cattle with their lives and their guns guns are a way of life in Texas then and now even today Texans owned 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 Cowboys 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 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 Cowboys entire way of life barbed wire in just 20 years two and a half million new settlers flood into the West new farms cover half a billion acres of open range a new battle rages cattle rancher versus homesteader Cowboys like Teddy blue and farmers are on a collision course 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 when we think about innovation in America we often think about the big audacious projects like the Apollo project but there's another strain too American innovation 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 Lytton has a breakthrough using a coffee grinder he crudely fashioned some steel Barb's his problem how to secure them Lydon solution bind the barbs between two lengths of wire his design cuts the price of fencing by 70% within 10 years Glidden sells enough to go around the world 25 times carving the planes into countless ranches and farms and blocking the cattle trails the open range is closed forever 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 and the birth of another 1876 a century of government policies target Native Americans 371 treaties to keep them separate isolated remote most of America's 300,000 tribes people now live on government assigned lands reservations but resistance is still fierce 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 aged 12 he's about to be part of the Sioux Nations last triumph white men come in like a river they told us that they wanted only a little lamp 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 seventh Cavalry Lieutenant Colonel George Custer stumbles across the SU 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 believes 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 American landscape December 29th 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 when I look back now I can still see the butchered women and children line 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 crossed the continent more than the rest of the world put together thousands of new towns spring up around railroad stations one every eight 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 u.s. suggesting two 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 2500 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's next one this is number one 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 one year over 100,000 sewing machines using the railroad Sears can sell virtually anything anywhere in the country 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 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 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 seven million Americans leave the country for the nation's booming urban centers we're buffalo once roamed now Rises the modern world you