St Louis to Jefferson City, Missouri Great American Railroad Journeys

I have crossed the Atlantic to ride the railroads of North America with

my reliable Appletons' guide.

Published in the late 19th century, Appletons' general guide to

North America will direct me to all that's novel...

beautiful...

memorable...

and striking...

in the United States.

INDISTINCT SHOUTING

As I journey across this vast continent,

I'll discover how pioneers and cowboys conquered the West...

and how the railroads tied this nation together,

helping to create the global superstate of today.

Through breathtaking scenery, where I'll encounter magnificent beasts,

mimic fearless explorers and witness distinctive customs,

I'll travel 1,500 miles,

recapturing the excitement and promise of the American frontier.

I'm beginning a new American adventure,

striking out west into regions that would have been uncharted territory

for most readers of my Appletons' guide.

I'll be using the railroads that enabled the United States

in the 19th century to fulfil its so-called "manifest destiny",

to span the North American continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

I'll be following the tracks of intrepid men and women

who ventured forth, to discover the indelible mark that they left

on the culture and the landscape of the West.

My journey begins in St Louis, Missouri,

from where I head west, pursuing the route of the pioneers,

taking in Kansas City and Dodge City.

I'll stop at a surprising British outpost in Colorado Springs

before turning south to Hispanic Albuquerque in New Mexico.

My journey will end at Arizona's awe-inspiring Grand Canyon.

Today I'm exploring in and around the city of St Louis,

on the great Mississippi river,

before heading west to Washington, Missouri.

From there, I'll travel to the very German Hermann,

and finish in the state capital, Jefferson City.

On my travels, I marvel at America's monument to the West.

It is absolutely astonishing.

But when you get beneath it, you can't believe the scale of it.

I learn of the expedition which explored new lands,

but had devastating consequences.

In the decades that followed, it meant the demise of the native Americans

and their way of life. It soon disappeared.

I try my hand on a pipe production line.

We're on a roll now!

Little bit of finger in that one.

And enjoy the merry traditions of the Midwest's German settlers.

-Eins!

-Eins!

-Zwei!

-Zwei!

Drei!

-Zicke zacke zicke zacke...

-Oi! Oi! Oi!

PLAYS FINAL CHORDS

I'm in the great metropolis of St Louis,

named in honour of King Louis IX of France,

who was canonised. It was founded by French fur traders

in 1764 on the western side of the Mississippi river.

After the city became part of the United States,

it formed "the gateway to the west".

I'm now riding the MetroLink in St Louis.

Appletons' explains the city's key position.

"Situated almost in the centre of the great valley of the Mississippi,

"20 miles below the entrance of the Missouri."

The rivers were the original highways of the United States,

but the Mississippi presented a formidable natural barrier.

And St Louis was the crossing point

for thousands who dreamed of a new life out west.

As the railroad struck out across America,

the mighty Mississippi was a colossal moat,

denying access to the territory beyond.

I'm meeting park ranger Don Schwarzberger

to find out how it was overcome.

Don, my Appletons' is quite excited about this bridge.

"The great St Louis bridge across the Mississippi

"from Washington Avenue to a corresponding point in East St Louis

is regarded as one of the greatest triumphs of American engineering.

Designed by James B Eads, completed in 1874.

Is it a great triumph of American engineering?

We believe it is, because a bridge like this

would never have been made out of cast steel.

And plus, the design itself had never been tried before.

James Buchanan Eads was a civil engineer from St Louis

who was largely self-educated.

What experience did Eads have of building bridges?

He had no experience of building bridges.

He was used to building hotels and buildings,

and when he heard about the dilemma they had here in St Louis,

he decided, "I'm going to build a bridge

"that's going to make St Louis accessible from the east."

And the bridge that he built was an engineering first -

the longest arch bridge in the world,

and one of the first to carry railroad tracks.

To combat the Mississippi's strong currents,

it had to be anchored into the bedrock

over 100 feet beneath the river,

deeper than ever before attempted.

And the public was anxious.

Now, the bridge was innovative.

-There was literally a fear, was there, that it wouldn't work?

-Yes.

Because of the structure and the way it was designed,

everybody was sceptical that it would not hold up,

so James Buchanan Eads, three days after the bridge was finished,

before it was to be opened on 4 July,

he took an elephant from the local circus

and decided to walk it across the bridge to prove to everybody

that it would hold, because folklore has it

that an elephant would not cross an unstable surface.

Don, do you know, I believe if I'd been asked to cross the Mississippi

on a bridge built by someone who'd never built a bridge before,

I'd be a bit sceptical too!

Throughout the 19th century,

Eads Bridge was the icon of the city.

But in the 20th, it would be rivalled

by another superb feat of engineering.

The Gateway Arch was completed in 1965

to commemorate St Louis' role as the gateway to the west.

It is absolutely astonishing. I've seen it, you know,

around the city, but when you get beneath it,

you can't believe the scale of it.

This must be the biggest monument in the United States.

It is the tallest free-standing monument in the United States,

at 630 feet.

To my delight, the way to ascend the highest monument in the country

is by train, running inside the arch.

'Doors are now closing.'

-Are you ready for a four-minute ride to the top?

-I can't wait.

We've accelerated. And now this is just like an elevator.

-Yes.

-We're going up pretty much vertically.

What a fantastic piece of engineering this is.

This is really exciting.

I think this is the darnedest machine I've ever been in.

And from the top, I'm rewarded with a fabulous view.

Well, this is like no building I have ever been in,

because here, you lean right out to get the view below.

As you lean down, you can see the people directly below,

and to say that they look like ants would be an exaggeration.

They look much smaller.

Whoa!

St Louis became the gateway to the west because of geography.

To understand its critical location, I'm taking to the skies.

This map in my Appletons' shows why St Louis

is so important. Here is the city,

standing on the west of the Mississippi river.

And just to the north of the city, the great Missouri river enters.

And in a few moments, I'll be at the point where the waters meet.

The Mississippi cuts through the United States from north to south,

and the Missouri flows in from the west.

In the era before the transcontinental railroads,

these were the nation's transport and trade arteries.

When it comes to American rivers,

size matters.

The browner waters of the Missouri river have travelled 2,300 miles

from their source in the mountains of Montana

to reach here the waters of the Mississippi.

And yet, the Mississippi still has more than 1,000 miles to travel

before it reaches the sea in the Gulf of Mexico.

And it's on the banks of the Missouri river

that I'm making my next stop.

At the turn of the 19th century,

this was French territory known as Louisiana.

It bordered the United States,

whose third president was Thomas Jefferson.

To find out how there came to be

an American west for the pioneers to conquer,

I'm meeting Jan Donaldson.

Jan, my Appletons' remarks in 1803, all the territory

then known as Louisiana was ceded to the United States.

Ceded by whom, and what did the territory really consist of?

Well, the Louisiana territory was a large piece of...

Real estate of the day. It was ceded by Napoleon of France,

who needed money to finance his wars in Europe.

And, of course, Jefferson was interested in buying.

It consisted of Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri,

Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota,

Wyoming and Montana.

A simply vast amount of territory.

I mean, it would take up much of the map of Europe.

It must have doubled the size of the United States?

It more than doubled the size of the United States.

Known as the Louisiana Purchase, the territory turned out to

be 828,000 square miles for which the United States paid 15 million.

One of the best real estate deals of all time.

Did Napoleon understand, did Thomas Jefferson understand,

what was involved in the purchase?

They did not.

There was a map of that day which only showed the tributaries

and the Missouri River going up to about where Nebraska is now.

So, that Matt did not even show everything that they were

buying, or that Napoleon was selling.

To find out exactly what he had bought,

Thomas Jefferson decided to put together an expedition to be

to be led by Captain Meriwether Lewis and Lt William Clark.

Jan and his team re-enact this historic voyage in a magnificent

and exact replica of the original keelboat used by Lewis and Clark.

Jan, that is, I think,

one of the most beautiful boats that I've ever seen.

Tell me about that.

It's 55 feet long. A cedar hull on the outside.

Oak ribs on the inside. It's got a bridge and so forth.

It carries a lot of cargo. It only draughts only about 30 inches.

We go up the river, and we'd like you to join us.

And we're going to put you in a set of whites and we're going to

go aboard.

Ready for action, Sir!

In May 1804,

Lewis and Clark set out with a corps of about 50 men to explore

the United States' newly-acquired lands.

Their task was to map the continent's interior,

collect specimens

and to make contact with the tribes of Native Americans.

On the boat today is 80-year-old Bob Plummer,

who's been making parts of this epic journey for 20 years.

You must have a pretty good idea of how fit men can be.

Would you say Lewis and Clark must've been very,

-very special kind of guys?

-Very.

Yeah, they were in good shape and they were in a lot better shape when

they started rowing up this river.

They actually cordelled more than they rowed.

They had men ashore with ropes over their shoulder

and pulled the boat up.

Problem was their feet would get so sore they'd lose their moccasins,

so they had to go barefoot,

and their feet was cut all the time.

It was a journey full of hardships and dangers, and the expedition

relied on help from the tribes that they met.

What contact did they have with the Native Americans?

Well, everywhere they visited the Native Americans,

they made contact on direction of President Jefferson.

And it was to exchange gifts and exchange information and make a pact

of friendship, because that's what it was,

it was an outreach to the Native Americans that had,

some of them, never seen a white man before.

They travelled to the source of the Missouri River before taking to

horseback to cross the daunting Rocky Mountains.

One year and 4,000 miles since they'd left St Louis,

the expedition reached the Pacific Ocean in November 1805.

Their maps and journals were indispensable

for settlers going west.

Am I right that you actually are a descendant of William Clark?

William Clark is my great-great-great-grandfather.

What do you think of the achievements of Lewis and Clark?

Well, certainly the most significant achievement is finding a feasible

route to the Pacific and opening the door to Western expansion.

I think for the Native Americans

it marks a point in time when their lives as they knew them were facing

the beginning of the end.

In the decades that followed Lewis and Clark,

it meant for the demise of the Native Americans

-and their way of life would soon disappear.

-Yes.

After my exertions on the River, I'm keen for a comfortable bed tonight

and in St Louis there's one obvious place for me to stay.

At the time of my guidebook, this was a magnificent,

opulent and busy railway terminal,

but today Union Station is a hotel.

Darlene Menietti is the resident historian.

-Darlene.

-Welcome to Union Station.

This is absolutely fantastic.

This must've been one of the great railroad stations of America.

Oh, exactly, and what you see today is the way it was in 1894.

Why did St Louis merit a station of such grandeur?

Oh, simply because this was the place first to the west

of the Mississippi. It married the east to the west.

Up until that time we didn't have anything that,

other than Chicago of course, that would tie the country together.

When opened it was the largest and most ornate terminal

in the United States.

The last commuter service pulled out of Union Station in 1978

and, in honour of those railroads,

I'm trying a coffee and almond liqueur cocktail

known as a Union Pacific.

-Here you are.

-Ooh, thank you.

You're very welcome.

Our Union Station signature drink.

Cheers.

Cheers!

Choo-choo!

It's a new morning in St Louis and, led by my Appleton's guide,

I've more exploring to do.

In this big city, I'm hoping to discover some tranquillity.

Appleton's draws my attention to Shaw's Garden,

"Which Henry Shaw has opened to the public

"and intends as a gift for the city."

This far west, I expected tumbleweed and cactus, not a bed of roses.

'The Missouri Botanical Gardens are like an oasis

'in the heart of the city.

'The gardens' president, Peter Wyse Jackson,

'came here in 2010 after working at the botanical gardens

'of Trinity College, Dublin.'

Peter, my Appleton's says,

"The herbaceous and flower garden, embracing ten acres, contains almost

"every flower that can be grown at this latitude.

"There are several greenhouses

"with thousands of exotic and tropical plants."

I was expecting the Wild West.

This sounds like, I don't know, Great Britain.

Well, Henry Shaw really created the garden

to be what he remembered from his childhood because, of course,

he was an Englishman. He was born in Sheffield in 1800.

And when Shaw began, what was here?

All that was here was prairie.

There wasn't a single tree on all of the land that he owned.

Was Shaw interested in the botany of America,

the samples coming back from the west?

Yes, indeed. He certainly grew a large number of specimens

in the garden from places in the US but, equally,

he was growing plants from all round the world.

Having made his money in the cutlery business,

Henry Shaw decided to use his fortune to cultivate

the prairie land and created these abundant gardens.

Inspired by that pioneering spirit,

the gardens later developed a Climatron,

the world's first geodesic dome greenhouse,

which today houses around 7,000 species.

Many of the plants that are grown in the Climatron are either

very rare or some of them are endangered.

Indeed, we have some species that are extinct in the wild.

We aim to have as complete a reference collection of the world's

plants, both preserved specimens and DNA for our DNA bank.

And maybe you could help us today.

-By going up there?

-Yes, indeed.

You look like a fit man who could do that.

Here we go.

'The huge range of plant specimens in the garden

'acts as a reserve for the conservation of species.'

Lovely sample there.

And now a sample of leaf.

A couple of leaves and two beautiful fruit.

-Now, what will you do with that?

-We will test to see whether these are

ripe and whether we can add these to the seed bank. The leaves

we'll make into a DNA sample, which will go into our DNA bank.

'Housed in the garden's herbarium, what began as a collection

'of 60,000 specimens in the 1850s, has now grown to over six million.'

Jim, this is an extraordinary facility that you have here.

When there was a great push to the West after the Louisiana Purchase

were lots of interesting specimens being found then

and were they being brought back to St Louis?

Yes. That is definitely true.

In the time of exploration, St Louis was the jumping off point

for all of the major military expeditions that went west.

Plants that they collected were sent here to St Louis.

Here are a couple of specimens from the 19th century.

These are two examples of what is called bluestem here.

This is one of the famous grasses, if you've ever read

any early descriptions of the prairies of this part of the world

you hear about people, men on horseback,

not being able to see over the tops of the grasses

and big bluestem is one of those that grows to 2m-2.5m tall.

Unfortunately, in this day,

most of these native grasslands have disappeared

because they were converted into agricultural lands.

-Is conservation a big part of what you do today?

-Oh, most definitely.

As usual I am hungry

and I've been looking forward to sampling

a St Louis speciality dating back to the 1930s.

So, this is gooey butter cake and basically,

what it is...is it is a dense yellow cake crust

and the filling is cream cheese, butter and powdered sugar.

So it was actually made in error by a baker here in St Louis.

They were making a deep butter cake and they reversed the flour

and sugar ingredients.

And so, when they did that, the cake did not rise properly,

so the baker's wife tried it and said, do you know what?

It's awfully good.

It was very gooey,

so the deep butter cake became gooey butter cake.

I definitely have to try it.

We should start here with the traditional, since you've never had it before.

Can I have a cappuccino and a traditional...

-Gooey butter cake, please? Thank you.

-Of course.

Thank you.

Oh!

Boy, that is good.

Naughty but very nice!

Between 1830 and 1870, the population of St Louis exploded.

Multiplying by 60 times.

Coping with such growth presented many challenges,

not least how to supply clean water.

Appleton's tells me that the city waterworks are situated 3.5 miles

north of the courthouse.

"The two pumping engines,

"each with a capacity of 17 million gallons a day, are worth seeing

"and are open to visitors at all times."

By the time of my guidebook, St Louis had become an enormous city.

With the Missouri and the Mississippi, there was water, water,

all around, but there might have been scarcely a drop to drink

but for human ingenuity.

In the 1840s and '50s, as the population boomed,

St Louis was struck by cholera.

Desperate to provide a safe water supply, the city board turned to

a talented railway engineer, James P Kirkwood,

to design a new city waterworks.

Today Pat Baldera is in charge of the 19th-century Chain of Rocks

water-treatment plant. He's going to show me how it used to work,

starting at these now disused intake towers in the middle of the river.

Ah!

One half bucket of Mississippi water.

Now, sir, would you care to drink that?

Mmm, bit brown, isn't it?

That's the famous sediment, is it?

Yes, you know, Mark Twain said you could tell the difference between

a St Louis man and an outsider because the outsider would try

to drink off the top

but a man from St Louis would stir up the sediment

and chuck the whole thing down.

Probably thinking that the sediment was good for you.

I'm going to confine the sediment to the Mississippi.

Here on the eastern shores of the river,

James Kirkwood designed a plant to rid the water of its sediment

and to purify it by filtering it through sand.

Today the plant operates on the same basic principle.

Now, I believe that in St Louis you pride yourselves on your water.

Yes, we consider ourselves to have the best water in the country

and I'd like to prove that to you by maybe taking a blind taste test.

-Yes, sure.

-All right, so, if I could get you to turn around,

I'll prepare you one sample with traditional bottled water

and one sample right from the filter plant here.

OK. No peeping, I promise.

All right, Michael.

Thank you very much.

Mmm.

I'm going to say this one is from the Mississippi.

-Am I right?

-You're right.

Do you know why?

-It's a little bit softer on the palate.

-OK.

It's kind of actually more interesting as a water.

-Very pure. Well done.

-There may be just a little bit of Mark Twain's

sediment still left in there.

MICHAEL LAUGHS I hope so!

'This morning, I'm leaving behind the big city buzz of St Louis,

'and, like so many before me, I'm heading out West.'

Good morning.

I'm going to Washington, Missouri.

35.

There you go.

Thank you very much indeed.

Platform B, at 9:15 . We start boarding at nine o'clock.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

'I'm taking the Missouri River Runner service,

'which follows the banks of the river for over 80 miles.'

Morning, sir, I'll get your ticket, please.

I'm getting off at Washington, Missouri?

Washington, Missouri, all right. Got you covered, have a good trip.

-Thank you very much.

-Thank you.

Today I'll visit the birthplace of a rural icon in Washington.

From there, I'll continue onto the German community of Hermann,

before arriving at the Missouri state capital, Jefferson City.

My first stop will be Washington, Missouri,

which Appleton's tells me is a "prosperous and handsome town".

I want to discover how the Europeans encountering an American crop

found a corny way of fulfilling their pipe dreams.

'I'm travelling on the tracks of the very first railroad to operate west

'of the Mississippi, the Pacific Railroad.

'Following the course of the Missouri River,

'it was built to connect early immigrant settlements and to promote

'further colonisation.'

-Thank you very much.

-You're welcome.

-Bye-bye now.

'The railroad arrived in Washington, Missouri,

'in 1855 and helped to make this town the world capital

'of a very particular product.

'I'm visiting the Missouri Meerschaum Company

'to meet Marilyn Lanning.'

-Hello, Marilyn.

-Hello, Michael. Welcome.

-Thank you very much.

-Wonderful historic building.

-Oh, thank you.

This is actually the original building that we built in

the 1880s and it was built specifically for the corn cob pipe factory.

'In the 19th century, pipe smoking was widespread

'and in the rural Midwest,

'where there was an abundance of corn,

'farmers whittled pipes from their own crops.

'In 1869, Dutch immigrant woodworker Henry Tibbe started to make pipes

'for sale and, within a decade, went into mass production.'

Marilyn, how does the process of making a corncob pipe begin?

Well, once the cobs get to the factory, Michael,

they're separated into size.

Then they're cut on the saw into lengths for the size pipe

that they're making.

Then they come over here to Robert and he drills the tobacco holes

in the centre.

Then after that, they'll go over and they'll be shaped by Nathan.

There's a cutter head that shapes some of them.

So, some of this roughness on the outside is going to come off.

It will. Then the plaster is applied to the outside of the cob and this

was the part of the process that was patented by Henry Tibbe back in the 1870s.

And that's what made his pipes stand out from all the other local manufacturers.

Why would you want to cover the bowl in plaster of Paris?

Well, because it would give it a smoother appearance and maybe make

the pipe last a little longer and there were those people who thought

smoking a corncob pipe was a little bit hickish,

so it would kind of make them feel like they were a little more

aristocratic, perhaps,

if they were smoking something that didn't quite look as rural.

-Hi.

-Hello.

Wow! You do those fast.

What have you got in the bowl there?

It's a white plaster.

It's almost the same type of plaster you'd use on a household wall.

Right.

Here's a cob that's natural. See how you've got all these holes?

-Yes.

-It fills them holes in to make it smooth,

then you sand them down and then you put the plaster in the second time.

And then it gets sanded again, by the time it comes out here,

it's slick as glass.

Lovely. You keep going because I don't want your plaster to dry there.

Yeah, plaster will harden up on me.

In this factory, they produce, pack and ship about 5,000 pipes

a day for the home market and abroad.

May I ask you what you're doing? What part of the process is that?

This is the little black ferrule on the stem.

I'm putting this on the stem and then they'll put the bit into it.

Have you any idea how many of those you can do maybe in a day?

Probably a couple of thousand in an hour...

-In an hour?

-In an hour.

-Really?

There's couple of thousand in a tub and I can do a tub

-in a couple of hours.

-Wow!

Do you mind if I have a little go at that?

-Show me how to do it.

-This...

I set it in there and line it up and hit it once to get it started.

Then I hit it the second time to level it out.

-Two taps.

-Yes. I always do two taps because the first one,

I'm afraid it's not really level, so with the second one,

-it levels it out more.

-Well...

One end is thinner than the other.

It's narrower, yeah.

So I pop that over the ring...

One tap and another tap for luck.

-Yes.

-That looks good.

We're on a roll now. A little bit of finger in that one.

Yeah. You'll soon be able to do 1,000.

Two taps and away to a pipe dream.

Excellent.

Manufactured just metres from the railroad station,

Henry Tibbe's pipes were exported across the country and the world.

Pipe connoisseurs Joe and Jim are aficionados of this icon of

the Midwest.

Jim, when is the ideal moment to enjoy a pipe?

You have to have time.

You shouldn't be disturbed by a telephone call or other people.

Typically for me it's after dinner, glass of wine.

The pipe you're holding now, is that a special pipe for you?

It's one that I use quite often.

We like to hunt and fish here in the Midwest and squirrel hunting happens

to be one of our hobbies.

-Squirrel?

-Squirrel.

Yes, relative to the rat, yes.

Tree rats, actually.

But we consider them a food source here.

And my wife cooks a fantastic squirrel in gravy

and squirrel hunting is done where you go out into the woods

before sun up, sit under a tree, usually in the fall,

and it's kind of frosty and you light it up, it warms your hand.

Keeps your trigger finger warm.

Who have been famous pipe smokers in American history?

Well, General MacArthur, I would say.

He's right up there.

He had his long-stemmed pipe designed down here for him.

And they say he used to take it when he was giving orders and he'd

use it to point. But he had a long bowl where he could probably be able

to smoke it for a couple plus hours without refilling.

I guess he was a busy man.

-A pipe, a glass of wine.

-Absolutely.

And squirrel with gravy.

Ha-ha-ha!

Throughout the 19th century,

European immigration to the United States gathered pace,

as groups from Europe fled troubles at home and were attracted to the

potential of America's new lands.

My next stop will be Hermann, Missouri, founded in 1836

by the German settlement society to be a city that was German in every particular.

And you don't have to be here for long to discover that they

certainly achieved that.

In an area of hills and river valleys, the early German settlers

began cultivating a crop that reminded them of home.

I'm meeting Jon Held, whose winery was established in 1847.

John, you have spectacular views here down over the Missouri River

and I must say, they are quite reminiscent of what you might see in

the Rhine in Germany. Is there some connection?

Oh, you bet. The early settlers to Hermann selected this area because

it reminded them of home.

When did the cultivation of vines first start here?

Right about the time the city or the town of Hermann was founded.

And then it increased in production, hitting its peak around 1878,

but by that timeframe, there were over 60 wineries

in and around the town of Hermann.

I am afraid to say that I had not thought of Missouri as being

particularly a wine-producing area.

We tend to think of California.

How important was Missouri in its heyday?

During the peak in the 1870s, it was actually...

for one year, the largest producing state in the nation.

Is that so? Are you very aware of your Germans?

Absolutely. Living in Hermann, with the strong German heritage,

as well as the wine, the German cuisine, very strong German identity.

-What about the language?

-Oh, the language died out with World War I.

An example, the town that my parents grew up in was called Potsdam.

But the day the US entered World War I, they changed the name

to Pershing, in honour of General Pershing.

The Feds really took a dim view of this town and they were

scrutinising for German sympathisers.

And that really killed that language out.

My grandparents spoke it in their home as children but then it stopped.

-Did that have an impact on wine growing?

-It helped kill it.

Because they were looked so carefully at by the Feds,

they didn't attempt to do any sacramental wines,

which a lot of wineries in California were able to survive

prohibition by making communion wine or sacramental wine.

But with the German...

Anti-German sentiment here, they didn't attempt that.

-May we move on to the vineyard?

-Oh, absolutely.

-Thank you.

The railroads initially boosted the Missouri wine industry,

transporting its product across America,

but when the first transcontinental railroad reached California in 1869,

the West Coast wines offered formidable competition.

Where does this grape come from?

The predominant species is Vitus aestivalis,

which is a native American grape.

So very well adapted to this climate.

-Are you having a good year?

-Oh, it's a great year.

It's a really warm season, adequate rainfall.

I think these are going to ripen into a really great vintage.

I think I'm going to ripen in this heat.

The heritage may be of the Rhine Valley,

but the grape varieties and the resulting wines are very different

from their European counterparts.

Not least because I've been expecting a German wine to be white.

So, this is a bit of a surprise, isn't it?

Because this wine is not in any way German, right?

Not at all. This is our top wine.

It's done in a traditional big red dry style,

not what you think of as a Germanic-style wine.

Very nice.

-Redcurrant?

-Definitely.

-Spicy?

-Very spicy.

Particularly from this vineyard site.

We get a lot of spicy character.

-How do we say around here...?

-Prost.

-Prost!

The population of Hermann today is still predominantly of German descent.

Traditions of the mother country are very much in evidence at the local

sausage shop, run by Mike Sloan.

So, Mike, what is this that I have here?

So that sausage is a bratwurst, it's the bacon, potato, cheddar bratwurst.

So, it's pork, seasoned spices and bacon, added cheddar,

added potatoes. So, what that means is it's a meal.

It's a meal all by itself.

-Oh, my goodness.

-All the major food groups are represented right there

-in that sausage.

-That is a very, very good sausage.

So, there must be huge demand for German sausages here.

We make 46 different flavours of sausage and bratwurst.

Are you a native of Hermann?

Yes, I am. I've lived here all my life.

-71 years.

-Have you any idea, you know, what proportion of this town

is German today, would call itself German?

40, 50 years ago, it was close to 100%.

Now, we have some people coming out from St Louis,

but I'd still say 80%.

What are the customs that you maintain?

Well, we have our May Festival, our Maifest,

we have the sausage festival, the Wurstfest.

We have Oktoberfest, October Festival.

Excuse me, is there any month you don't have a Fest?

A couple of months, yes.

And at the heart of any self-respecting German festival is

beer and a singsong.

# Mein Vater war ein Wandersmann

# Und mir steckt's auch im Blut

# Drum wandr' ich flott, so lang ich kann

# Und schwenke meinen Hut... #

Here we go!

# Faleri, falera, faleri

# Falera ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha

# Faleri, falera

# Und schwenke meinen Hut. #

Eins, zwei, drei.

Zicke, zacke, zicke, zacke. Hoi, hoi, hoi!

-Zicke, zacke, zicke, zacke.

-ALL: Hoi, hoi, hoi!

It's a new day and I'm continuing westwards on the

Amtrak River Runner Route.

-Guys? May I join you for a second?

-Sure.

Thank you very much.

It's very nice to see a family using the train.

-Where are you headed for?

-We're going from St Louis to Kansas City.

-Do you like using the train?

-Absolutely.

It's clean, it's comfortable, you meet nice people.

-It's the best way to travel.

-Wow!

You sound like an advertisement for the railroads.

Actually, many Americans seem to be railroad averse.

They just get in their car.

I think if you grew up in the north-east, it's a different story.

I think your statement is correct for other parts of the country.

The Midwest, particularly, but the East Coast, that's a way of life.

Yeah. That's true, that's true. And do you know this route?

Have you travelled it before? I'm just enjoying the views of the

-Missouri River so much, aren't you?

-Very scenic, very nice.

My next stop is Jefferson City,

which Appletons' tells me is the capital of the state of Missouri.

Beautifully situated on high bluffs which overlook the Missouri River.

Named after Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence.

Third president of the United States.

The man who made the Louisiana Purchase from Napoleon of France

and who set out the grid pattern for the settlement of the American West.

Ladies and gentlemen, we're arriving in Jefferson City.

Please gather your belongings, make your way to the exit doors.

Jefferson City, now arriving.

All right, folks. Be very careful here. Watch your step.

Thank you very much.

Located on the river between St Louis and Kansas City,

Jefferson City began as a midway trading post.

It's the capital of Missouri, but by no means the state's biggest city.

With a population of just over 40,000, it has a quiet, small-town feel.

Every state in the union has a capital city and a centre of government,

generally known as the capital, and in nearly every case,

dominated by a dome.

This one in Jefferson City, Missouri,

has a sort of grey, austere elegance about it.

Inside, I'm hoping to find something a little earthier.

My Appletons' gives the reader detailed descriptions

of American towns and cities but in the days before guidebooks,

people in the east struggled to get an image of the new western lands.

I'm here to meet art historian Joan Stack

to find out about a famous frontier painter

and Missouri politician, George Caleb Bingham.

Why is George Caleb Bingham significant?

Well, he was an early artist who painted the West and he didn't just

paint Native Americans and buffalo,

he painted the people who worked in the West.

And when people saw these images in the east,

they began to really realise, perhaps, the potential of the West.

Painting primarily in the 1840s and 50s, Bingham was the first artist to

bring realistic images of the West into the drawing rooms of the rich

and influential in New York.

Well, not what I expected as images of the Wild West.

Tell me about this image.

This is the picture that made George Caleb Bingham famous.

And the picture was called The Jolly Flatboatman.

The interesting thing is that you see the type of person that was in

Missouri at that time.

We see a kind of a group of young immigrants, Young Americans,

who represent the potential of the United States.

And then this would be an oil painting of his, would it?

Yes. This is a painting called Watching The Cargo, painted in 1849,

that was displayed in New York.

It appears at first to be this beautiful landscape with this

beautiful evening sky, but if you look closely,

you'll see there is a wrecked steamboat in the painting,

so they're protecting the commercial goods because the river is dangerous.

And Bingham was a member of the Whig party,

which supported the idea of improving the rivers,

of making them more safe to navigate.

How different is Bingham's art from what other people are painting in the West?

Well, most of the artists who are painting the West are taking

advantage of the romanticism around the Native Americans,

the exotic animals like the buffalo, but to many people,

that is the West that is disappearing.

There was also a West that was growing and those are the river men,

those are the people that are working the rivers,

making America a united country,

uniting the East with the West,

creating this commercial world, this economic world,

that had a great deal of potential.

Remaining in Jefferson City, and led by my guidebook,

I find myself outside the imposing walls of an enormous fortified building.

Jefferson City's State penitentiary, says Appletons',

is massive and spacious.

Evidently, so it is.

I'm just asking myself why

such a small town would need such a huge jail.

This intimidating structure was opened in 1836

and was operational for 168 years, until it closed in 2004.

I'm meeting Mike Gruce, a former warden.

Mike, the interior of the prison confirms its size.

Why so big in Jefferson City?

This prison should've housed around 1,000 inmates -

that's what a state our size would have housed.

But what happened is we're located at the stepping off point to the frontier.

We were the furthest west prison in the United States for a number of years.

Those people going west, they're concerned about not

being killed by an Indian or eaten by a bear.

Not building a prison.

And if you are a person that went west, let's say on a wagon train,

and you ended up in Colorado and you robbed your mining partner out there

or something, what did they do with you?

There were no prisons.

What they did is actually hauled you all the way back to Jefferson City, Missouri.

That's what caused us to have a population of over 5,000 people here at this prison.

As the last bastion of law, this prison served the entire

Wild West, and serious and violent criminals from beyond the frontier

were brought here by local sheriffs or bounty hunters.

Must have been pretty crowded.

It was certainly crowded and with six people per cell,

you have to consider in those days there was no plumbing,

there was no electricity, there was no heat.

And in this particular case as well, they didn't even give them a bed.

They simply gave them a straw-filled mattress and they slept on the floor.

What was the daily routine of the prisoner?

The primary job was building the prison.

Each of those millions of rock it took to build these buildings in

this wall, each of those have been cut out of the ground

by an inmate, and hand-shaped.

So this was a massive construction project to build their own prison.

The prison was notorious for its harsh conditions.

Silence at all times,

solitary confinement in the evening and hard labour during the day.

Why is the door so low?

The fact behind that is, the prison was so large,

and so they felt like demanding of respect from inmates

was the primary thing they needed to do to control the prison.

So they had a number of rules that subjugated these inmates down

to the lowest possible level.

And part of that was that they were not allowed to make eye

contact with the custody staff.

I'm imagining emerging in this incredible temperature

to a cell that has five other men in it and on top of that,

as I come out of myself,

I've got to stoop down and peer at the ground.

Because the punishment of being here is not just incarceration.

It's the breaking of my spirit, too.

During the 19th century, the Missouri State Penitentiary

was less interested in rehabilitation and more in

convict labour.

When the inmates weren't involved building the prison,

what were they put to work doing?

They were put to work manufacturing things that were needed

by the people in Missouri and the people settling in the West.

We supplied a large portion of the harness for horses that pulled those

wagons west, in Westward expansion.

We found the records for saddle trees,

which is the piece under a Western saddle.

We were producing 60,000 of those a year here.

How were the raw materials imported into the prison?

How was the product exported?

In the early years, it was brought in on a wagon behind a team of

horses or mules. But that wasn't sufficient.

With 5,000 people, you need a lot of raw materials.

And what happened here is eventually we had to bring it in by train and

they put a rail spur actually into the prison that they hauled in the

leather goods and the steel and the items that we needed for manufacture.

Whilst the inmates made goods for the Pioneers, the railroads forged

West, carving out routes for trade and new settlement.

While migrants clung to cherished customs, in these harsh new lands,

they had to adapt and work hard.

When President Thomas Jefferson bought

a vast amount of territory from Napoleon Bonaparte,

he set the United States on course to dominate the continent

from ocean to ocean.

When Lewis and Clark explored it,

they open the gate to speculators, cowboys and settlers.

It was the making of modern-day America.

But it spelled doom for the indigenous population of

Native American Indians.

The West was won at their expense.

Next time, I'll marvel at the art of the auctioneer...

HE REELS OFF NUMBERS RAPIDLY

..confront the brutal hardships faced by early pioneers...

400,000 people made that journey.

They claim at least 9% died along the way.

..discover freight trains, American-style...

You've got 100 cars. That is more than a mile.

We do have some long trains here, yes.

..and learn the truth about one of the notorious outlaws

of the Wild West.

Jesse's not bearing a gun, Jesse's back's to us,

so we're just going to murder him in cold blood.