Lawrence to Lamar, Colorado Great American Railroad Journeys

I have crossed the Atlantic,

to ride the railroads of North America

with my reliable Appleton's guide.

Published in the late 19th century,

Appleton's General Guide to North America

will direct me to all that's novel,

beautiful,

memorable

and striking

in the United States. THEY CHANT GREETING

As I journey across this vast continent,

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

GUNFIRE

And how the railroads tied this nation together,

helping to create the global superstate of today.

The early pioneers made their way across North America

in wagon trains, but the railroads made possible

the wholesale settlement of the West.

I started my journey in St Louis, Missouri,

then headed to Kansas City.

From there, I'll forge west across the plains, to lawless Dodge City,

before arriving in the mountains at Colorado Springs,

and finally, heading south, through New Mexico.

I'll end in the awe-inspiring natural wonder

of Arizona's Grand Canyon.

On this leg of my journey I'm leaving Missouri's Kansas City,

and heading west to the college town of Lawrence in the state of Kansas.,

From there I'll travel to Topeka,

and on to the infamous Dodge City,

before finishing on the western edge of the Great Plains,

in Lamar, Colorado.

Along the way, I pay homage at the cathedral of basketball.

-You've got to turn and shoot. Good job.

-Yeah!

..get my hands on a vintage hooter...

TOOT

Wow, that was fun!

..discover what life was like in the Wild West...

He's got a gun...

..and hear about the harrowing tragedy at Sand Creek.

A quote comes to mind in all atrocities -

"The only thing necessary for evil to succeed

"is for GOOD men to do nothing."

On my American odyssey

I'm continuing to puff westwards, towards the state of Kansas,

admitted to the Union in 1861.

By the time of my guide book,

Kansans had converted this state of prairies and tornadoes into

"famous wheat and corn fields and immense cattle ranges",

according to Appleton's.

But what sort of cultures had blown in on the wind?

Kansas celebrated its statehood

as the United States was descending into civil war.

No stranger to bloodshed, in 1854

Kansas territory had been a flashpoint in the nationwide battle

over slavery, when pro-slavers and abolitionists

clashed over whether their future state should be slave or free.

And the town of Lawrence, Kansas was named in honour of an abolitionist,

Amos A Lawrence.

I've arrived in Lawrence, which, according to Appleton's,

even THEN had 10,000 inhabitants.

"Located here with over 300 pupils is the Haskell Institute,

"a United States Indian school."

"Indian school" - I find those surprising words in a 19th-century publication,

a period that one would think

was dominated by shootouts and scalpings.

So far on my journey west,

Appleton's has proved a useful guide to pioneer settlements

and railway boomtowns.

But I've read little of the people who lived on these lands

before the arrival of the wagon trains and the railroads.

When it was founded in 1884,

Haskell College in Lawrence was one of 60 schools designed to rid

Native American children of their tribal identity.

I'm meeting Stephen Prue, part of the Haskell administrative team,

and a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe.

I was very surprised to find that

this school was founded in the 19th century. What was its purpose, then?

Well, it was founded by the United States government

in partial fulfilment of trust and treaty obligations.

American Indians at the time were under the War Department,

many were still considered hostile,

so the schools' primary job was not only to educate, but to assimilate.

Kill the Indian, to save the man.

What was the difference between the culture of the Native American,

and the culture of those who were coming in from Europe?

Well, I think the people that came in from Europe,

their focus was on ownership.

Native American culture views our relationship not only with the earth

but with each other in terms of a community,

and that those resources are here for all to share,

but not for all to just use for themselves.

Haskell started with just 22 pupils,

and by 1894 the number had grown to 606, drawn from 36 different states.

Many had been forcibly separated from their families, and transported

thousands of miles across the country.

The regime at Haskell was harsh.

On arrival, the children were stripped of all traditional clothing

and tribal belongings.

They were made to work the fields in preparation

for lives as labourers and servants,

and in the schoolroom, they were taught white American history.

-What about language?

-They would be disciplined and punished

for speaking their language, saying their prayers.

There was even a jail on the campus, where students,

if they were not following the rules, could be handcuffed,

brought to the jail and locked and given food and water for the day

to correct their behaviour.

Not until the civil rights movement in the 1960s

did government educators begin to adopt a more enlightened approach

to the education of these people,

who President Lyndon B Johnson described as "forgotten Americans".

In 1993, the Indian school

became the Haskell Indian Nations University.

Business student Chris Sindone combines his degree studies

with American Indian dance performance.

Would you mind telling me about the regalia you're wearing?

The regalia, this is a traditional prairie chicken dance outfit.

The beadwork all comes from different pieces and parts

of my family. I have porcupine needles that are softened up

on my roach, and I have my eagle feathers

and I have our prairie chicken pheasant bustle.

It originates within the Blackfeet community, up in Montana,

close to the border of Canada.

At the beginning of the mating season,

all the male prairie chickens are out there, trying to be

cocky, you know, they want to impress the best lady out there,

so they're out there fighting each other to, you know, to

show their vanity.

Will you honour me with a display, a performance?

Absolutely, I'd be honoured.

Ah.

I have learned one word which I hope will express my thanks

and I hope I'm going to say it right... Aho.

Aho! Thank you, you said it perfectly. Thank you.

Haskell is not the only academic institution in Lawrence.

The University of Kansas, or KU, was founded in 1865.

Now it has a student body of almost 25,000,

making it the largest in the state,

and it accounts for almost a fifth of Lawrence's population.

"The state university," says Appleton's,

"is a large and handsome structure

"standing upon a bluff called Mount Oread

"in the southwestern part of the city."

If you were ever asked in a pub quiz what Kansas University is famous for

and you were to answer "basketball", you would score a slam dunk.

The Kansas University basketball team is known as the Jayhawks,

a hybrid of the quarrelsome blue jay and the fighting sparrowhawk.

It was the name given to those 19th-century abolitionists

who fought to make Kansas a free state.

'Curtis Marsh is director of the DeBruce Center at the university,

'and a Jayhawks fanatic.'

-Hello, Curtis.

-Hello, Michael.

-How are you?

-Good to see you.

-Lovely to see you, as well.

-May we sit down?

-Of course.

And we're sitting next to whom?

This is Dr James Naismith, the inventor of basketball.

He was in Kansas for 40 years until his death in 1939,

and he helped the university create a historic basketball programme.

Dr Naismith was a Canadian sports coach and chaplain,

who came up with the idea of basketball

while working with a YMCA training group in Massachusetts.

-Why had he invented the sport in the first place?

-Ah.

There was a very cold winter in the northeast.

He had a great number of athletes at the school that were used to playing

American football and rugby, and they were...

Quite frankly they were restless.

The winter months were just too cold for those outdoor activities, so he

was challenged to find a sport that they could play inside where perhaps

they don't beat each other up and tackle each other,

and basketball was created.

Naismith divided his class of 18 into two teams of nine.

The object of the game was to lob a ball into a goal

fixed high on the wall.

The only thing available at the time

was a peach basket.

Michael, one of the things that we love about this game is that

the scoring is just astronomical,

you can have a game where 100 points are scored.

Not when it was a peach basket, because you had to stop the game,

grab a ladder, head up to the peach basket and take the ball out.

Well, they created a wonderful improvement,

which was nothing more than cutting a small hole in the bottom

of the basket, so that a broom handle could pop the ball right out.

After a few more refinements,

Naismith arrived at KU in 1898,

where basketball was wholeheartedly embraced.

In 2016, the university opened a permanent exhibition

to honour the great man.

'I made up some more rules. The most important one

'was that there should be no running with the ball.'

Two pages of typescript, with Naismith's signature -

give me an idea of how important this document is.

This document, which as far as we know is the only

initiating document for a major sport,

was purchased at auction for 4.3 million,

and it was bought by one former student of the University of Kansas

and donated to us.

And now you have it behind glass, with electronic paraphernalia...

I mean, this is like the Crown Jewels.

I think it's the Crown Jewels of basketball, no question.

# Jayhawks, come on!

# Jayhawks, here we go!

# Jayhawks, come on! #

All the greats have played here in the famous Allen Fieldhouse Stadium.

And today there's a new rookie player on the team.

-Right, how do we begin, Coach?

-So, the first thing we're going to do, we're going to get on the block,

where it gets real dirty.

Real dirty? OK, fine.

What you're going to do is put your back to the basket.

Yes, and you're going to post up, and when you post up,

-you're going to get physical.

-OK, physical.

-You're going to get physical.

-Get big.

-All right, get big!

Go, Michael! Go, Michael!

-There you go.

-Yeah, there we go.

Look at that!

Thanks to the dedication of KU players and coaches,

basketball soon became a national sport...

Yeah, that was good, that was good.

# Michael, Michael... #

..and in 1936, an Olympic one.

Here we go, get ready. Turn and shoot. Good job! There we go!

Yeah!

# KU! #

Here we go. We're big on high fives at KU. Yeah!

Curtis, do you remember coming here to watch games?

I will never forget it, it's what made me a Jayhawk fan.

What does this place mean to you?

Next to my family, it's the most important thing in my life.

The games here are like no other.

There's so much energy here that it's really like nothing else.

Better get ready now, cos you're going to get licked in your own stadium today.

You got it, Michael.

# Go, Michael! #

Stop him, stop him!

It's in...

Good sport!

In truth, there are not many passenger trains nowadays

running in the state of Kansas,

which is why it's a great joy to find a heritage line running between

Baldwin City and Ottawa at a very dignified speed.

Ladies and gentlemen, all aboard!

All aboard!

Thank you.

'After the end of the American Civil War in 1865,

'the United States government began to speed up settlement of the West

'by investing in the railroads.'

At first, settlers hailed the railroads

as the bringers of prosperity.

Many also invested in their construction,

and sought to influence the routes.

'I'm meeting Kansas historian Virgil Dean,

'to find out how all that changed when the railroad companies

'became over-mighty, and how the people fought back.'

Hello, Virgil.

-Michael.

-Good to see you.

-Good to see you, yes.

The public got involved in these railroads as investors, did they?

Exactly, especially if you were in a rural area, just getting started,

they were vital to a town's success, and so towns would

get into bidding wars over railroads

just like they do with businesses or corporations, factories now.

Once the railroads have become a settled part of the landscape,

how do people feel about them then?

I think you could say, as some people have,

that it was kind of a love/hate relationship with the railroads

from the very beginning. People lost money on them.

Railroads didn't always live up to their promise.

They might just decide at the last minute to go this direction,

instead of this direction, and miss your town,

or planned town, altogether.

In the late 19th century,

numerous privately-owned railroad companies operated in Kansas,

including the Santa Fe, the Kansas Pacific and the Union Pacific.

How was it that they affected people's lives?

Well, they're very important to people,

but they also see abuses from time to time.

Most commonly, what you'd hear is that railroads charged too much

for hauling freight, and that the passenger fares were too high.

By the 1870s, the political corruption,

which a lot of people tied to the large railroad companies -

and other businesses, but railroads in particular - is a big issue.

In the 1880s and '90s,

a combination of drought and competition from overseas

had left farmers struggling and angry with the wealthy railroads,

whom they accused of naked greed.

They formed a political party, the Populists,

to demand, amongst other things, that the railroads be nationalised.

So would it be going too far to say

that amongst rural communities anyway,

at the end of the 19th century,

the banks and the railroads have become villains?

Yeah, that's definitely the case

when you get to the Populist movement

during the 1890s, where you have attacks on Wall Street, even,

railroads and bankers, banks,

similar to what we have today with the talk about

too much concentration of wealth and power

and how much of a corrupting influence that has on

society in general and individuals.

'In the end, people power didn't win the day.

'The railroads stayed in private ownership,

'and the Populist Party petered out.'

-Thank you very much.

-You're welcome.

-Off to the loco.

'But on this train, at least, the people are firmly in control.'

Hello, guys.

Hello, how you doing?

Rob, are you a volunteer?

We are all volunteers.

What's the impulsion to come and do this volunteer work,

-why do you do it?

-I love old machinery.

-Do you?

-Old cars, trucks.

-I'm a gearhead.

-MICHAEL LAUGHS

Would you mind if I pulled the hooter?

You've got to go long...long...

-short, long.

-OK.

No traffic over here, are we good?

Yep!

-Long...

-Long...

-..long...

-long...

..short...

and long.

TOOT

-Wow, that was fun!

-All right. You got it.

It's a terrific view, the track here is dead straight.

When you get out here you realise that

normally in a train you only have about

a half or a quarter of the experience,

because you only see what's going by the sides.

Here I can lean out, I can see what's ahead...

I've got the sun on my head, I'm in the open air.

THIS...is the way to ride a railroad.

Now we cross one of the highlights of the route for me, Sand Creek,

on the little rickety wooden bridge like something out of a western.

Rob, we appear to be approximately in the middle of nowhere,

and I think this is my stop - if you'd very kindly let me off that would be great.

All right, I will let the conductor know.

Thank you.

Bye, Rob! Thanks for the ride.

-Bye, Michael!

-Safe journey.

-You too.

Travelling through the lush farmland of Kansas,

at a stately 20 miles per hour,

it's hard to imagine a more peaceful place.

But, the area has its surprises.

This is Tornado Alley,

where dry air from the Rockies meets moist air from the Gulf,

creating more tornadoes than anywhere else in America.

The weather centre in Topeka gathers vital meteorological information,

and there I'm meeting Mike Smith,

one of the country's foremost tornado experts.

Did you become a tornado expert by following tornadoes around,

by being a so-called tornado chaser?

I was one of the very first tornado chasers in 1972,

while I was attending the University of Oklahoma.

But that's not how I got interested in tornadoes.

I got interested in tornadoes when I was five years old,

and an F5,

the most intense type of tornado, passed a few blocks to my south.

When I saw all of the damage the next day,

the thought went through my mind,

anything that could do this had to be pretty interesting.

Mike has turned his passion into a business,

and amongst his clients are railroad companies.

What have you been able to do, then,

to help the railroads to avoid disaster?

We tell the railroads in advance where the tornado is going to cross

the track on a milepost by milepost basis,

and they will stop the trains in that area.

And do you believe that you have avoided catastrophe?

Oh, we know we have. The railroads tell us that.

In the case of the Greensburg, Kansas tornado,

another EF5 tornado back in 2007,

they were able to keep the trains out of the area,

and the two trains stopped

were able to watch the tornado in the darkness

pass safely in between them, illuminated by lightning.

This is the first known image of a tornado on the Great Plains,

taken by a Kansas farmer in 1884.

Back then, there was no way of predicting where or when

these forces of nature would strike.

Nowadays, any dramatic shifts in air pressure and humidity are monitored

from the weather centre's upper air building.

Every day, meteorologist Brandon Drake

sends two of these balloons up into the atmosphere.

The instruments will send back data,

which can be used to forecast tornadoes.

This balloon's going to go up about 35 km.

Once it does that, it'll pop,

and it'll fall back down with the instrument attached still.

This thing will take a profile of the atmosphere

roughly above this location.

-May I watch the launch?

-You may.

On the Great Plains, spring is tornado season,

but they can occur any time.

-Er, don't let go...!

-I won't.

-OK...

-Let me know when you've got it.

-I've got a good grip on it. Wow!

-OK.

I must say, this is very distinctly different

-from holding on to a party balloon, isn't it?

-It is.

-Brandon, ready for lift-off?

-Ready for lift-off, Michael.

Here goes.

Yee-hah!

Whoa, watch it go!

The Great Plains make up about a third of the whole landmass

of the United States, but here in the Midwest

the climate has created a very particular ecosystem,

known as tallgrass prairie.

-Hello, Paula.

-Hello!

Paula Matile is a rancher,

who heads a conservation project in the Kansas Flint Hills.

It's the largest area of prairie to survive.

Paula, how much prairie do you have left here?

The national preserve is about 11,000 acres.

And before this was disturbed by the white man,

how much prairie was there in what we now call the United States?

Tallgrass prairie once covered about 170 million acres,

and now we're estimating less than 4% of that is still around.

A rare herd of American buffalo, also called bison,

roams freely over the whole preserve,

so we're extremely fortunate to come across them.

Oh!

You have to drive very carefully, don't you?

This is... I never thought I'd ever be this close to a bison.

What fantastic animals. Aren't they?

Yeah, we reintroduced the bison to the preserve in 2009

with 13 head, and we're up to about 100 head right now.

They graze differently than cattle, so they leave these little

micro-habitats for different species of bird.

The immense treeless horizon of the prairie was shaped by the constant

grazing of the buffalo, and by fires caused by violent electric storms.

Oh, that is beautiful. That is very, very beautiful.

This is such an important landscape.

It's getting developed and it's getting ploughed up

and it's disappearing right before our eyes,

and the tallgrass prairie IS American history.

This was the American Dream - to be out in the tallgrass prairie

and to make a living.

The Kansas prairie has been mythologised in American culture.

Bye-bye, Paula. Thank you very much.

One writer in particular fixed the landscape in the public imagination.

The poet Walt Whitman.

Known as America's bard, he was born in New York in 1819,

but in later life adopted the persona of a western frontiersman,

complete with beard and Stetson.

-Hello, Philip.

-Hello, Michael.

'Philip Barnard is an English professor

'at the University of Kansas.'

Who was Walt Whitman?

Walt Whitman is one of the greatest of American poets.

What is the impact that this landscape,

these prairies, have upon him?

He idealises the prairies.

They represent for him a fertile new territory, where a new society

can be built, that's both modern and democratic

and free from the influences and limitations of the past in his mind.

A distinctively American society for him.

What do you mean by that?

He felt that US culture to the mid-19th century

was still derivative on its European origins,

and envisioned a more modern, a more egalitarian culture

linked by railroads and growing in vast spaces, like the prairies.

Did he write specifically about railroads in his poetry?

There's a very beautiful poem called To A Locomotive In Winter,

where he celebrates the railroad and locomotives as engines of modernity.

"I hear the locomotives rushing

"and roaring and the shrill steam whistle.

"I hear the echoes reverberate

"through the grandest scenery in the world.

"I cross the Laramie Plains.

"I note the rocks and grotesque shapes, the buttes.

"I see the plentiful larkspur and wild onions, the barren,

"colourless sage deserts.

"I see in glimpses afar or towering immediately above me

"the great mountains.

"I see the Wind River and the Wahsatch mountains."

So here's a man who celebrates nature, but also the railroad,

which, after all, is violating the nature.

For Whitman, the railroad is part of nature.

It's a modern window onto nature,

through which one can appreciate nature differently.

The landscape of the prairie and the expansion of the West

continue to inspire American artists today.

The composer Mark O'Connor is one of them.

This is his beautiful Poem For Carlita.

Excited to be heading to the wildest of Wild West towns,

famed for its gunfighters and gamblers, Dodge city.

From there, I'll cross into Colorado,

finishing at Lamar, on the Great Plains.

This splendid train is known as the Super Southwest Chief,

and it runs on the old Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railroad.

Now operated by Amtrak, it runs between Chicago and Los Angeles,

travelling in darkness and light over three days.

I've arrived in cowboy country, but that is a misnomer -

for this land once belonged to the Native American and the buffalo.

The night train from Topeka, Kansas, reaches Dodge City before dawn.

So new arrivals must wait until sunrise

for their first glimpse of America's fabled Wild West town.

Today, Dodge City has a population of around 30,000.

Many work in the meat processing industry.

150 years ago, the arrival of the railroads sparked rapid growth in Dodge,

and unleashed a tide of lawless behaviour that made it notorious.

Dodge City, nicknamed "cowboy capital of the world",

"Queen of the cow towns",

"wicked little city",

"bibulous Babylon of the frontier."

I wonder what it did to earn that reputation, and whether it deserved it.

Dodge City was no more than a mud hut, or sod house, and a saloon

before the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railroad

built a depot and laid rails in 1872.

Buffalo hunters, then cattlemen were magnetised

by the business opportunities,

and used the railroad to transport hides,

meat and cattle on an industrial scale

to the cities of the East and North.

To hear more about this western boom town,

I've come to a reconstruction of Dodge's famous Long Branch Saloon.

Brent. Put it there.

Howdy, pardner. Welcome to Dodge.

Glad to finally have you here.

'Brent Harris of the Boot Hill Museum

'keeps the spirit of the Old West alive.'

How did Dodge City get started?

It started in 1872, the train arrived in Dodge.

Shortly after come the longhorn cattle from Texas.

Along with them comes the young Texas cowboy.

They have just spent three months driving a herd of more than 1,000

longhorns, facing more danger and working harder than ever before in their life.

These boys are weary, they're tired,

they're probably a little bit angry.

They're ready to let their hair down,

paint the town red, and we're here to help them do that.

The cowboys arrived off the trail in early spring,

with three months' pay in their pockets.

And the railroad company shipped in fine liquor,

boots and guns for them to spend it on.

They turned a blind eye to the violence and lawlessness

in the town's many bars, brothels and gambling dens.

What about law enforcement?

They hired Wyatt Earp,

legendary Wyatt Earp, probably the best in the business.

And of course, the first thing he wanted to know - what are the laws,

what are the ordinances?

The mayor at the time said,

"The only laws are - don't kill the customers."

Now, a year here in Dodge was early spring, late fall.

In the winter, nothing happened.

One year he was credited with 374 arrests.

Earp's part in the legendary shootout at the OK Corral earned him a place in history.

But the fearless lawman portrayed by Hollywood was more

was more accurately a gambler and a gunslinger.

Do you think there'll be any trouble in town today?

Well, if history is any indication, it's...it's possible.

But uh...

first we're going to have to do something about that outfit.

You look like a city slicker.

Is that better?

Dodge City's reputation as the hell on the plains was well-deserved.

SCREAMING

Oh!

Oh!

He's got a gun...

He's dead.

-What happened here?

-You keep that barrel pointed down.

-Show your hands!

-Hands up!

I think half the town just got wiped out in front of me.

By the mid-1880s, the railroads reached directly into Texas,

heralding the end of the cattle drives,

and the cowboy capital became

just another farm town on the plains.

Shortly before the first cattle drives headed for Dodge, in the mid-1870s,

buffalo hunters piled in to use the railroad to transport their kill.

The name of Dodge City will forever be associated

with the demise of that magnificent beast.

Here's a poignant passage from Appleton's.

"At every little station, heaps of buffalo bones lie along the tracks.

"The number of these gigantic animals

"slain by hide hunters in two or three years

"in the territory tributary to the railway must have been over half a million."

"For many trainloads have already been hauled away,

"and the industry of bone-picking is profitable."

I feel ashamed, because surely we measure our humanity not only

by how we treat one another, but how we behave towards animals.

Especially the buffalo,

that man used for survival,

and to further his progress.

Vast herds of buffalo roamed the grasslands of North America for

10,000 years, but within 50 years of the white man's arrival in the West,

they were hunted close to extinction.

Earlier in my journey in the Flint Hills of Eastern Kansas,

I was lucky enough to encounter a small herd.

Here on the plains around Dodge, it's wonderful to see more.

They're being reintroduced by the Wild West Heritage Foundation,

led by president Ryan Birch.

Ryan, as we approach the bison and the buffalo,

you better give me the dos and don'ts. What are the safety rules?

Well, I wouldn't recommend getting out and petting them.

That's why we're in the back of this truck going down here rather than walking.

The herd is made up of a rare golden bull buffalo, known as Buck,

and three cows, who all gave birth during the summer.

It's good to see some handsome specimens of buffalo here today,

I've been reading about the slaughter of them.

Before the slaughter, what kind of numbers were there?

You know, back in the mid-1800s

there was nearly 60 million of these buffalo roaming the plains.

And what was their relationship with the Native American?

You know, the buffalo were such a tremendous asset,

but not just as a source of food.

Starting with their hides, which were used for bedding, clothing, tepees.

The brain of the buffalo was used to tan the hides.

The bones were used for weapons and tools.

The stomachs and the bladders were even used for containers,

and all the way down to the manure was used for fuel.

So the Native Americans hunted them,

but there was no danger in those days that they would be hunted to extinction?

That's correct.

The arrival of the railroad spelled the end of the buffalo.

The enormous herds delayed trains and destroyed track.

Rail companies responded by offering "hunting specials",

from which passengers would shoot the animals for sport.

One Dodge City trader reportedly shipped 200,000 hides at a time back east,

where they were made into coats and hats,

as well as leather belting,

to drive the machines of America's Industrial Revolution.

What is the attitude of the white American when he arrives in the territory?

You know, it's more of a young man coming in for adventure, and trying to make a profit.

There was individuals that could kill 100 or 250 a day,

and when they could sell those for three dollars a hide, you know,

it was a very lucrative business back in the time

when the average worker was making about a dollar a day.

Now, from what you've told me, the relationship with the Native American,

this must have impacted the Native Americans too, enormously.

Absolutely. The population of the Native Americans went down greatly,

as they depended on these animals.

MUSIC PLAYS

I'm drawn to the Dodge City Depot

by the unmistakable sounds of a big band.

The Dodge City Cowboy Band, founded in the early 1880s,

is still going strong.

THEY PLAY THE STARS AND STRIPES FOREVER

Wow, that was fantastic.

Very patriotic. The Stars And Stripes Forever.

I never saw it conducted with a gun before.

THEY LAUGH Tell me about that. What are you doing with a gun?

It's in the tradition of Chalkley Beeson, who began the Cowboy Band

here in Dodge City. He conducted with a gun - for show, of course,

but he said that if any person

played a false note, he'd kill 'em.

Anyone you want to pick out today(?) THEY LAUGH

Chalkley Beeson was a buffalo hunter turned cowboy, then saloon owner.

His band began playing nightly outside the Long Branch Saloon.

Its fame quickly spread.

The band serenaded the governor, and in 1889 travelled to Washington DC

to play at the inauguration of President Benjamin Harrison.

They weren't working cowboys of the day - they may have owned steers and cattle,

they wanted to give that impression of what Dodge City was.

Now, at the risk of someone getting shot this time,

can I have a few more bars?

Oh, here comes the revolver. THEY LAUGH

THEY PLAY THE STARS AND STRIPES FOREVER

With the oppression of the Native American,

and the extermination of the buffalo,

the story of the Wild West is quite morally complicated.

But the cowboy is the enduring hero.

This booted and spurred figure, through literature, through stage shows,

through movies,

has become the greatest source of entertainment

that the world has ever known.

I'm up early to leave Dodge as I arrived, under cover of darkness.

I'm catching my old friend the Super Southwest Chief,

which will carry me to my next destination.

-Good morning.

-Morning, sir.

-Bright and early.

-Oh, yeah.

The next stage of my journey

takes me through an area known as the Breadbasket of America.

As I follow the old Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe route,

I'm tracing the history of the West.

This land was once home to the Plains Indians,

but was granted to the railroad companies by the government,

for sale to prospective settlers.

In the 1879 edition of Appleton's

there's an intriguing advertisement placed by a railroad, luring people

to Kansas to buy wheat-growing land.

At the next stop, Garden City, a lady, Jannetta, will get on,

who's going to tell me the story, with reference to her own family history.

Watch your hands...

Jannetta?

-Jannetta!

-How are you?

-Good morning, welcome aboard.

-It's a big step up now.

-OK... There we go.

There we are, that's better. Come on in.

All right.

I'm using this Appleton's from 1879,

and there's an advertisement there placed by the Kansas Pacific Railroad.

"Lands, lands.

"The leading wheat state in the Union in 1878.

"Kansas. A farm for everybody.

"62,500 farms. Five million acres for sale.

"The best land in America, from 2 to 6 per acre."

Wow. It really was an interesting time, wasn't it?

Oh, definitely. Well, the government wanted to break this all open,

and the early surveyors were like, "Oh... There is nothing out there but desert,

"you don't want people to go out there."

And what they would do then

is to get people interested they would sell plots of land very cheaply to build up towns.

Tell me about your ancestor, who was involved in this business.

My ancestor - I happened to bring a picture of him - is IR Holmes,

and he was the land agent for Santa Fe.

And he came to Garden City

and sold thousands of acres there,

then moved up the train

and he was one of the founding fathers of Lamar, Colorado.

And then he would go down to Texas and run the routes down there.

And so, made his millions being a land agent.

In the 1860s, the population of the state of Kansas tripled to a million,

as settlers flooded onto the Great Plains and began to farm the land.

-Further east, where I started my journey, there was an awful lot of corn.

-Right.

Corn on the cob, as we would say. What made people here farm wheat?

I do believe that where they came from,

in Germany, Russia,

that kind of area, they were very familiar with the grains.

In fact, my last name, Heberle, is German for "keeper of the grains".

The government and railroad companies

knew that the climate on the Great Plains

would suit only settlers

with experience of prairie-style agriculture.

So advertisements were placed in northern Europe,

including Russia and Scandinavia.

The early European immigrants who responded

managed successfully to grow winter wheat on a large scale in Kansas.

And it remains one of the state's most important crops.

I have a surprise. I baked this loaf of bread for you yesterday.

-You baked it?

-I did.

-Oh...! Smells delicious.

So, we're going to break the bread, Michael.

This is what nice, fresh bread looks like.

Mmm!

Very nice taste. Nice bit of crispness around the crust... Very nice.

Well, Jannetta, thank you. You have brought me bread

from the Breadbasket of America.

-Fresh from my kitchen, even.

-SHE LAUGHS

During the late 19th century,

there seemed to be no limit to the power of the railroads.

We've crossed into Colorado, and the clocks go back one hour -

we've moved from Central Standard Time to Mountain Standard Time.

Before the railroads established time zones,

every town set its own time according to dawn and dusk.

By the 1880s, when the time zones were introduced,

the power of the railroads was resented.

One newspaper commented, "The sun is no longer the boss.

"55 million people must eat and sleep and work, as well as travel,

"by railroad time."

But in fact, the railroads had brought order out of chaos.

-Thank you very much, sir.

-Thank you.

-Y'all enjoy.

-Thank you.

Lamar, Colorado, a railroad town named after a 19th-century senator,

boasts a fine Art Deco cinema.

Having had an early start, breakfast is on MY mind.

-Good morning, gentlemen.

-Good morning.

Do you come here regularly?

Yes. He has coffee here every morning.

And what have you had for breakfast today?

I had eggs and bacon.

That's fairly standard. What did you have?

Eggs, bacon, biscuits.

And the biscuit is a little round thing,

-it's like what I would call a scone.

-Well, we eat biscuits like this.

-Oh, do you?

-Yeah.

-I'm in Colorado now.

Big biscuit country.

I've ordered pancakes today, think that's a good choice?

Yeah. That's a real good choice.

Ah, thank... That's for me. Thank you very much.

Some maple syrup.

You're supposed to pile them all up, one on top of the other.

Oh, really? Well, let me try that.

Pile them all on top of each other.

-Am I doing better now?

-Yeah, you're doing better now, but you need more maple syrup.

-Maple syrup on there.

-Pancakes have a tendency to be dry.

-Are they good that way?

-They are.

That is the right way to eat them.

THEY CHUCKLE

-Hello.

-How you doing?

-Good morning. Good to see you, my name's Michael.

-I'm John.

-Are you a trucker?

-Yeah.

-What's your route today?

From Texas to Eugene, Oregon.

How many miles would that be?

Uh, 2,230.

2,230. 2,230 miles?

-Yeah.

-How long will that take you?

-Three days.

What kind of a life is it?

-It's enjoyable.

-Really? I love it, yeah.

Why? Isn't it rather lonely?

It's... It's not that, it's the enjoyment

of delivering everything that America needs.

So it's... You know,

whether it's toys for kids or it's pilings that build a bridge,

it doesn't matter - you know, it's what keeps America together.

That's a great attitude.

I'm heading 50 miles north of town,

to a long-since abandoned stop on the railroad line.

The first noteworthy station in Colorado, says Appleton's,

is Kit Carson.

It's gone now.

"Situated on Sand Creek,

"about 20 miles above the spot where Colonel Chivington's Indian massacre

"took place."

The United States has not been particularly keen

to own up to atrocities against Native Americans,

and so it's interesting to find in an 1891 publication,

that it's already described as a massacre.

The Sand Creek massacre was one of the most shameful incidents

in the wars between the United States and the Indian tribes

who found themselves in the way of white settlement of the Great Plains.

Jeff Campbell is consultant historian for this national historic site.

A former police investigator,

he's devoted the past 16 years to examining evidence from the terrible

events which took place here in November 1864.

A melancholy sight.

What was the background to the massacre?

This was a reservation area

from Sand Creek down to the Arkansas River.

It was assigned to the Cheyennes and Arapahos in 1860, by treaty.

That treaty greatly reduced Native American Indian lands.

And in response, they stepped up raids on white settlements.

The governor of Colorado territory declared war on all hostile Indians.

In August 1864, with tensions rising,

tribal chiefs resumed talks with the territorial government

and the United States Army.

It was the understanding of the chiefs and most of the people there

that negotiations would continue.

The Cheyennes returned to this area,

they set up a camp here.

They felt that they were under the protection of the military.

On the 28th of November,

a group of US cavalry left Fort Lyon and rode through the night,

arriving at Sand Creek at six on the morning of the 29th.

They were led by Colonel John Milton Chivington,

a former elder of the Methodist Church,

well known for his violent hatred of the Plains Indians.

Over what area, looking from here, did the massacre occur?

The soldiers came from the south,

and they came up around the bottom of this hill,

and we've pretty well located that from soldier testimony.

They came across here, and they went up the valley,

and as I point to the village stood in there,

it was about a half a mile from end to end.

Women were up, maintaining the camp.

They were getting water, cooking morning meals,

and they heard, in this quiet, calm morning,

what they thought were the sounds of many, many hooves.

And they went back to the tents, or the tepees, and they were saying,

"The buffalo are coming, the buffalo are coming!"

What they heard were the soldiers,

and about 675 horses, plus four pieces of artillery.

Over nine hours,

between 200 and 230 Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians

were killed, and a similar number wounded.

Eyewitness reports from two United States officers

who refused to take part

describe horrific scenes,

as soldiers tortured women and children

and looted and burned the camp.

And was this action maverick, or officially sanctioned?

We may never know.

Because there is very little

written word or orders or anything

to the effect to attack these people.

In the aftermath,

there were at least five general and staff

that discredited and disavowed

the attack on Sand Creek

as unprofessional,

breaking of trust and honour,

uh...

ungentlemanly-like,

unmilitary-like,

against the flag of truce...

Neither Colonel Chivington nor any of his soldiers

was ever indicted or tried.

In 2007,

Sand Creek was designated a National Historic Site

in recognition of its significance, and every year,

prayer ceremonies and healing rituals are held at this spot.

We've had actually descendants of soldiers come here.

During those ceremonies there are blessings and prayers,

and paying homage to the

remains of ancestors that are buried in the burial ground.

During the commemoration of the 150th,

the governor of the State of Colorado for the first time

made an apology to the tribes, for what happened here.

You must have reflected on this event a great deal -

how do YOU feel about it?

A quote from the British...

philosopher Edmund Burke comes to mind...

as in all atrocities.

"The only thing necessary

"for evil to succeed

"is for GOOD men to do nothing."

The Native Americans suffered because of the greed of land-grabbers,

cowboys and railroads as they pushed west.

But remember that most of the white Americans were of European descent.

When the Spanish had colonised Peru and Mexico,

they had been equally villainous and murderous

with the indigenous population.

It was the English that introduced slavery to Virginia,

bequeathing to the United States

a bitter legacy not fully resolved to this day.

If the treatment of the native is a stain on American history,

then the Europeans have no reason to be smug.

'Next time, I'm transported back to the Mexican-American War...'

-You ready?

-Yes, sir.

-That's the spirit.

'..I explore gun culture in the Old West...'

You have to remember there was not a lot of law and order.

'..discover the perils of an historic railroad...'

They actually built forts along the canyon walls

and aimed their guns at each other, shots were fired back and forth...

'..and descend to 14,000 feet.'

Oh, my word, we are going to the very...

edge, that's unbelievable.