La Junta to Colorado Springs Great American Railroad Journeys

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

with my reliable Appleton's Guide.

CAR HORN HONKS

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 SHOUT

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 super-state of today.

STEAM WHISTLE BLOWS

I'm continuing my journey west on the South-West Chief train

and now approaching the Rockies -

the so-called continental divide

that represented a formidable barrier to the railroads

and so to the unification of the United States.

President Jefferson had needed only cash

to acquire a vast amount of territory

that doubled the size of his fledgling country.

Out west, an even greater expansion would be achieved by war.

My railroad journey began in St Louis, the gateway to the West,

and took me across the Kansas Plains to Dodge City.

Next, I continued to Colorado Springs in the Rockies,

onto New Mexico's Albuquerque,

before ending on one of

the great natural wonders of the world.

On this leg, I visit Colorado's La Junta and ranching territory,

before crossing the Raton Pass into New Mexico.

From there, I'll push north to the Rockies,

stopping at Canon City,

and onto Colorado Springs,

before finishing at the stunning Pikes Peak.

Present...

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

Soldier, your buttons are a mess,

but you don't need good buttons to fight a war.

-Are you ready?

-Yes, sir.

Explore gun culture in the Old West.

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

I discover the perils of an historic railroad...

They actually built forts along the canyon walls

and they aimed the guns at each other.

Shots were fired back and forth.

..and ascend to over 14,000 feet.

Oh-h-h...my word,

we are going to the very

edge - that's unbelievable.

My next stop is La Junta.

Appleton's tells me it's the point of junction with the main line

extending to all points in New Mexico and Arizona.

The first glimpse is caught of the Rocky Mountains

still 60 miles distant.

In 1845,

a New York editor had written that, "The United States had a manifest

"destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free

"development of our yearly multiplying millions."

This ideal, this God-given right, was to sweep all before it.

In 1845, United States President James Polk

was in dispute with Mexico -

a vast, sparsely populated nation with a strong cattle industry,

whose territory stretched to upper California.

My next stop, La Junta, lay close to the western border

between the United States and Mexico on the old Santa Fe Trail -

an important trade route between the two.

I'm heading eight miles east to Bent's Old Fort,

in its heyday the south-west's only white settlement and trading

centre on the Santa Fe Trail.

Set up by fur traders in 1833,

it welcomed trappers and Plains Indians dealing in fur

and buffalo hides.

But in 1846, this neutral outpost became the base

for one of three United States armies

on the disputed border with Mexico.

Hasta luego.

Present arms.

-Sergeant.

-Yes, sir.

-What unit is this?

-First Dragoons.

Kearny's Army of the West.

Fine looking body of men.

-Excellent men, sir.

-What use are you making of the fort?

Well, we are on our way into Mexico, to Santa Fe,

and the fort is currently being used as a warehouse

and a hospital for the sick and injured.

-Mm. Men are well prepared for it?

-They are, they are well armed.

Soldier, your buttons are a mess,

but you don't need good buttons to fight a war.

-Are you ready?

-Yes, sir.

-Good.

-Go get me a Mexican.

That's the spirit. Now, here's a picture of a soldier.

-Are you ready to fight?

-Yes, sir.

Well, you look smart, the Mexicans will be terrified of you.

Thank you.

-Sergeant.

-Yes, sir.

-I'm proud of you.

-Thank you, sir.

-Permission to carry on.

-Yes, sir.

Bent's Old Fort hosted Colonel Kearny's Army of the West,

made up of his first United States Dragoons Regiment

of 1,000 cavalrymen and an army of volunteers from Missouri.

'John Carson is park ranger at today's living history museum.'

John, in 1846, the United States forces are flowing into this remote

place, Bent's Fort, why?

Well, President Polk has declared war on Mexico and Colonel Kearny's

mission is to be the northern prong of the US invasion.

In 1846, the Arkansas River, a quarter of a mile away,

is the border between the United States and Mexico

and this is the only place on the Santa Fe Trail to stop

and use as a jumping off point.

War had broken out over the annexation by the United States

in 1845 of the then independent Texas,

which had been Mexican territory.

The two nations disputed the new border

and whether Texas ended at the Nueces River or the Rio Grande.

As tension mounted, the Mexicans crossed the Rio Grande,

leaving up to 16 Americans dead.

President Polk saw an opportunity

and rushed a war request through Congress.

The idea then was the bigger you are,

the stronger you are and he didn't use the phrase Manifest Destiny,

but that became a huge movement where the United States had,

if you will, God-given duty to gain control of all the land

from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

Manifest Destiny captured the public's imagination and was the

subject of a painting by John Gast in 1872.

America pictured herself leading civilisation,

liberty and progress westward,

sweeping aside the natives and their animals.

How did Colonel Kearny's mission work out?

It went pretty easy compared to the other two prongs.

Again, Kearny left here,

got to Las Vegas and New Mexico and read his proclamation that that area

was now going to be under the United States.

Got to Apache Canyon on this side of the Santa Fe and Governor Armijo

had a force of somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000 men,

but as the US Army neared that area, they left.

So, basically, Kearny walked into Santa Fe without firing a shot.

'The two-year war would fulfil America's Manifest Destiny,'

but it came at a cost.

Over 14,000 Americans and up to 25,000 Mexicans

paid with their lives.

So, how much land did the United States gain in the end?

We would gain what's now the southern part of Colorado,

Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, parts even of Wyoming,

Utah, Nevada and California.

-Immense.

-Huge, huge.

With the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo,

which ended the war in 1848,

the United States gained the northern half of Mexico,

representing roughly a third of the United States' landmass today.

It also inherited a cattle ranching tradition

developed under Spanish colonial rule.

The legacy that would help to create the most iconic figure

of the Wild West.

Is the cowboy simply a figure from history?

Well, there are still cattle, there are still ranches.

The old skills must still be alive.

I think I should give them a try.

After all, in my life, I've worn more than one hat.

Off the beaten track, south of La Junta, lies Las Animas County.

I'm hitching a ride through this ranching territory

with Steve Wooten.

Hello, Steve.

Thank you very much.

Welcome.

Good to see you, thank you.

Steve, has your family been in these parts for long?

Michael, we've been in this part of the country for four generations.

My great-grandfather emigrated from Ireland in 1860s and he developed a

cattle business, a sheep wool business

and a goat business, where he traded on the railhead

that they developed there, so that they could transport

livestock and the produce back east.

The arrival of the railroad at La Junta in 1875

transformed its cattle industry.

Large ranches could load cattle here and transport them east.

Unlike the cowboys of the cattle drives, ranch families settled.

Did he acquire much land?

Through the years, he did, Michael.

By the time Papa Joe passed away, he'd made seven ranches,

one for each of his children,

and the total amount of those ranches was of

greater acreage than all of Ireland that he left.

That is amazing.

President Abraham Lincoln's Homestead Act of 1862

encouraged western migration.

Any adult citizen who headed a family could, for a small fee,

received 168 acres of public land to cultivate for five years.

The Act distributed 80 million acres by 1900.

And do you still have to do the cowboy things,

like branding and lassoing and riding horses?

Yes, Colorado is a brand state, so we brand our cattle.

We prefer to move our cattle horseback.

It's our tradition, it's our heritage,

it's been done that way since 1800 and we like to carry that part on.

Gosh, Steve, you have a stunning property.

Look at this terrain.

Michael, we're blessed to be here.

'Steve's going to show me the ropes.

'It's a loopy business, but I'm game.'

I think you'd better stand back.

All right, let's get a bit of speed up now.

Point it straight, there you go.

Walk towards it.

'In the 18th century, native cowboys, called vaqueros,

'from the Spanish word for cow,

'developed their roping skills using braided rawhide.'

Later, when Western settlers poured onto former Mexican land,

they learned the traditional ways of the vaqueros.

By the 1870s, the classic Wild West cowboy as we know him had arrived.

This loop, double or nothing, point it right, palm down,

right at the front of the bail.

There you go. OK.

Step towards it.

I'd say, yes.

That's as close as I'm going to get.

I'm going to steer away from this activity.

You're game, all right!

-Good job.

-Thank you.

-Hello, Joy.

-Nice to see you.

-Good to see you.

-Welcome to Beatty Canyon.

-Thank you very much.

-What have you got in the pot, Joy?

-We're cooking brisket.

Whoa! Look at that, that's huge.

-One of your own beasts, of course?

-Of course.

It's great to cook outdoors.

I'm not sure whether today we're going to be able to eat outdoors,

-what do you think?

-I think it's going to rain,

-which would be awesome.

-"Awesome"?

-Awesome.

We always need rain on the dry prairie.

THUNDER CLAPS

That is so good. Cooked to perfection.

And wonderful to have a beast straight off the ranch.

I wanted to ask you,

I'm using a late 19th century guidebook to go around

and I believe that even then tourists were coming to visit

ranches, is that right?

I think then they were dudes from the east that weren't

accustomed to the open space, the cowboy lifestyle, the horseback,

cattle riding, wrangling, and so they were craving that experience

because Western lifestyle had been iconicised in dime store novels.

Do you have dudes today?

We do, but we're more of a traditional ranching experience,

where you can get involved in all aspects of it,

including the horses and the cattle, but the fencing,

the windmilling and everything else

that comes with raising cattle on a ranch.

Why do you think people are so attracted by the West?

I believe it's the open space and the quietness.

It's difficult for a European to get a hold on how big this country is.

Look, I've already come 550 miles from Kansas City.

I'll be passing through Flagstaff, still 700 miles to go.

I'm 2,000 miles from New York, more than 1,000 miles from Los Angeles.

With a country like this, let the train take the strain.

From La Junta station, I'm taking an Appleton's recommended itinerary on

the old Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad.

Thank you.

Built along the great trading route of the Santa Fe Trail after the

Mexican-American war,

this important railroad connected Missouri with New Mexico.

It greatly influenced settlement in the south-west.

This is the topographical highlight of the journey. As Appleton says,

"The railroad climbs the mountains through the Raton Pass on a grade of

"185 feet to the mile.

"At an elevation of 7,688 feet,

"the train plunges into a tunnel under the crest of the Raton Range.

"The light of Colorado quickly vanishes

"and that which flashes upon us again in a few minutes

"is the warm brightness of sunny New Mexico."

So long, Colorado.

Howdy, New Mexico.

Raton was a ranching town

and trade centre that flourished thanks to the railroad.

Today, alongside its many tourist attractions,

Raton lists a vast 33,000-acre shooting and recreation centre.

It belongs to the National Rifle Association.

The NRA was founded in 1871 by Union veterans dismayed at the poor

marksmanship shown by Northern Yankee troops

during the American Civil War.

Today, it's a powerful gun lobby.

'I'm meeting firearms museum curator Robbie Roberts

'to find out about guns in the Wild West and their legacy today.'

Robbie, in the exploration and the settling

-and the conquest of the West...

-Yes.

..do the explorers and the settlers and cowboys, do they need the gun?

Absolutely. It was an invaluable tool for the folks coming out west.

Hunting to put food on the table,

they were used for self-defence against the Indians and the outlaws.

You have to remember, back in the Old West,

there was not a lot of law and order and, in a lot of cases,

you couldn't tell the lawmen from the outlaws, OK?

But their primary use was to put food on the table.

Fur traders, pioneer settlers,

soldiers and Native Americans relied on their guns.

By the 1860s, a time of Civil War and great western expansion,

a significant firearms industry has emerged,

dominated by gun makers such as Colt,

Smith & Wesson and Winchester.

Probably the most recognisable is the Colt single action,

the model of 1873.

It's called the Peacemaker

and it was actually developed for the United States Army,

but it was so good that it went and wound up in the civilian market.

And, literally, millions of them were sold over the years and

they're still in production today.

This weapon, then, represents a breakthrough, does it?

Yes, sir, it does. Absolutely, because it is a revolver

and the biggest advancement was

it used a self-contained metallic cartridge,

whereas the firearms that predated it were all cap and ball

muzzle-loaders, basically.

The American Civil War was followed by a series of Indian wars,

as the United States Army pushed west

and Native Americans resisted encroachment on their land.

The Army shipped 37,000 Colt pistols to its cavalry

as the standard issue sidearm.

Now, what about the long-barrel weapons?

Probably, again, the most recognisable is the Winchester 1873.

-Oh, yes.

-OK.

And this was used by the Army, by cowboys, by Native Americans?

All except the Army. They didn't really welcome them

because they thought it was a waste of ammunition.

To give you an example - when Custer went to Little Bighorn,

they were all shooting, their standard issue

was single-shot rifles.

The Indians, on the other hand, had repeating rifles.

In the early 20th century, an advertising campaign marketed

the Winchester as the gun that won the West.

Hollywood reinforced this in the 1950s,

glorifying the cowboy era and placing the iconic rifle

in the hands of gun-toting legends.

Is there an opportunity to fire a weapon today?

You betcha. We'll go out and shoot a Colt and, you know,

if we want to do that, we need to head to the range as we speak.

Good.

-You're going to hit those ducks, are you?

-I'm going to try.

There's no guarantee in the shooting world.

'Robbie exercises his constitutional right to keep and bear firearms.

'Around a third of Americans either own a gun

'or live with someone who does.'

Even when you're ready for it, it's pretty loud, isn't it?

Yes, it is.

-How did you do, Robbie?

-Not very good,

-but you'll notice I was pretty close.

-You were pretty close.

I could see the sand being kicked up just beyond the target.

Yes, I was a little high.

Now, if that was an animal or if it was a bad guy out there,

it wouldn't have mattered because it would have been deadly.

-You routinely carry a gun?

-Yes, sir, every day.

-Why?

-Well, because I'm going to protect myself and my family.

Now, I've never had to use it and I'm thankful of that.

I don't want to have to use it, but if somebody's there to do me ill,

I would rather be prepared than not be prepared.

So, you've never had to use it in your life?

-No.

-But every day of your life, there's been a risk that it might go

off accidentally, that one of your kids might get hold of it.

-I don't know, you're running a risk every day.

-No. One, you know,

gun safety is paramount and all the gun accidents that happen,

I guarantee you,

one of the three golden rules of gun safety was violated.

Is that the fault of the gun?

No, it's the fault of the individual behind the gun.

Does it not worry you that a high school student may come in

and buy a gun and massacre his classmates?

Well, is it something that we think about every day?

No. Is it a concern?

Sure, it's a concern.

Is there a gun law that's going to stop that?

Unfortunately, no.

To Europeans, these views are surprising.

Indeed, the United States astonishes us again and again.

But travel is meant to broaden the mind.

It seems that Americans are much influenced by a history that's bound

up with the Colt and the Winchester.

From the New Mexico border heading north,

there are now no passenger services

and the line has been given over to freight.

Appleton's draws me to Pueblo,

one of the chief cities of southern Colorado.

Once situated on the historic Denver and Rio Grande railroad,

my guidebook tells me that it has a large steel works.

I'd always thought of steel as coming from Pittsburgh

and the East, but the guidebook opens my eyes

to something that should have been obvious.

If you're going to build a railroad from ocean to ocean,

you needed a steel plant in the West.

I'm meeting general manager Ben Lutz at the site of the original plant

that made this steel city.

Ben, this is a tremendous piece of industrial archaeology.

I have a real sense of history here.

And, indeed, this plant is mentioned in my 1891 Appleton's,

so you've been here a good long time.

Yes, we started manufacturing rails back in 1882.

Why was it that the plant was located here?

The Rocky Mountains are rich with iron ore and coal deposits,

which are our two primary materials that are needed,

and the railroads needed a supply of rail here in the West

to continue their westward expansion.

William Jackson Palmer was the railroad tycoon

behind the Denver and Rio Grande western railroad.

Instead of importing steel from the East,

he decided that it was cheaper to make steel rails in the West.

His affiliate business,

the Colorado Coal and Iron Company,

created the first integrated steel mill

west of the Mississippi.

And it was the railroads then that drove the existence of this plant,

the demand for the steel from the railroads?

Absolutely. This plant is here for rail

and that's still what we make today.

So, these great tubes of hot metal...

-Yes.

-What are they?

-So, these are blooms.

They come from our steel-making process.

Here, we are a 100% recycling operation.

Our primary source is shredded automobiles.

And you can make a reliable rail for the railroad out of shredded

-automobiles?

-Yes, we can.

The old steel mill used the British Bessemer method.

Four blast furnaces belted out plumes of smoke,

as steel was made from the chemical reaction between coal and iron ore.

So, this is the initial rolling process, called our breakdown mill.

This is where we'll start to change the shape from the round we saw

earlier into something that looks a lot more like a rail.

Much more of it appearing now and...whoa!

A lot of heat coming off that metal.

Yes! The rolling temperature here is about 1,900 degrees -

that's the optimal temperature for rolling steel.

How many rails do you make here?

So, every day, we'll produce about a thousand rails.

-A day?

-A thousand rails per day.

Out it comes one more time.

Much longer and slimmer and giving off an extraordinary amount of heat,

as it disappears past us.

Pueblo's steel plant was acquired by the Rockefeller family in 1903 and

became central to a steel business that in 1906 employed as much as 10%

of Colorado's population.

One of the things that I noticed was just how long the rails were,

much longer than in the old days.

Correct. Lengths have progressed throughout the years.

Originally, starting very short just to what the men could carry by hand.

Today, the standard is approximately 80 feet.

So, you take these 80-foot lengths and then what do you do to them?

They travel in special trains that can take 48 pieces

of quarter-mile-long rail out to the field.

-That I have to see.

-We certainly will.

Ben, a remarkable sight.

Very long rails coming out of what?

So, this is a welding plant,

where the 80-foot pieces that we produce are flash-butt welded

together into quarter-mile-long pieces.

And then loaded onto these enormous trains?

Yes, specialised trains made to handle the quarter-mile pieces,

taking them to the field where they'll be installed.

And are your markets in North America?

Yes, we supply all the major railroads in North America,

even the Amtrak Route from Kansas to Trinidad,

Colorado was made with rail from this facility.

I've been travelling on that very route

and I knew that it felt smooth.

I'm glad you're enjoying it.

My rail adventure continues to the West

and will bring me to some of the most beautiful scenery in the world.

I'll stop first at Canon City to explore the Rockies,

before heading north to the former spa town of Colorado Springs

and ascending the great Pikes Peak.

Colorado's southern Rocky Mountain region

was a winter refuge for Indian tribes such as the Ute, Arapaho

and Cheyenne.

The United States gained the territory in 1845

when it annexed Texas.

By 1848, America's western territories

stretched beyond this natural frontier to the Pacific

and lay open for conquest by the railroad.

Expansion west would fuel this region's commerce

and draw visitors in the tens of thousands.

This pretty place is Canon City,

which Appleton says is

"a flourishing mining town with coal deposits,

"oil wells and mineral springs.

"The attraction for the tourists

"lies in its proximity to superb scenery

"and Main Street points straight at it."

My late 19th-century guidebook is drawing me about two miles west to

a railway that enters the gorge of the Arkansas River

and cuts through steep granite walls for eight miles.

This scenic highlight through the Rockies was made possible by

the construction of an historic narrow-gauge railroad in 1880.

-Hello.

-How are you doing?

Very well, thank you. Looking forward to this.

I bet you are. OK, you're going to be in this car right here.

-Thank you.

-Not a problem.

-Enjoy your trip, sir.

-Thank you very much.

-RADIO:

-'Got a tour on board. Let's take 'em west, over.

INDISTINCT REPLY

HOOTER BLOWS

Every year, 100,000 visitors take this,

one of Colorado's most scenic two-hour trips.

Today I'm fortunate to be riding up front

with the locomotive engineer and some fellow enthusiasts.

Hello.

-I'm Michael.

-Ken Craig, nice to meet you.

-Hello, Ken.

-Steve, nice to meet you.

Hello, Steve. Very good to see you.

It's a great privilege to ride in the cab.

-It is.

-I know how I got here. How did you get here?

Well, we're on a nine-day tour of historic railroads around Colorado

and paid the extra admission to come up here and get a first-class ride.

It's a wonderful view, isn't it?

This is one of the most spectacular routes in the western part

of the country and just a beautiful thing to see.

You sound like a bit of an aficionado of railroads.

So...I volunteer on the weekends at a railroad museum and actually

rebuild steam locomotives for fun.

Wow, you really are, may I say, a fanatic?

-That's fantastic.

-Well, to a degree, yes.

-I'm not going to distract you any longer.

-Thank you, Michael.

-Good to see you. Steve.

-Nice to meet you.

The Royal Gorge Railroad tracks the Arkansas River,

which for three million years has eroded the granite of Fremont Peak,

making the gorge over 1,000 feet deep.

I'm hoping to learn more from museum curator Lea Davis Withero.

Lea, hello.

-Hello.

-I'm Michael.

-Nice to meet you.

-This is one of the most beautiful railways

I've ridden on, it's absolutely superb.

What's the history of this, how did it start?

Well, this railroad began as part of William Jackson Palmer's vision

to connect the front range of Colorado to the rich mines of the Rocky Mountains.

After the Civil War,

the Americans turned their eyes to the West

and there is a mania to connect the Pacific and the Atlantic coasts.

Palmer comes up with a unique vision to connect them

with a north-south line running south from Denver

all the way through Santa Fe to El Paso, Texas,

and eventually to connect to the rich trade of Mexico.

Clearly a very innovative man.

Who was this Palmer?

Palmer grew up in Philadelphia during the Industrial Revolution and

he fell in love with railroads.

He travelled to Britain,

he enjoyed travelling on your railway system

and learning all about coal technology

and how it could increase efficiency in American railroads

and he brought those ideas back to America.

In 1859, Palmer suggested the Pennsylvania railway

should burn coal instead of wood in its locomotives

and thereby halve the company's fuel costs.

He also introduced three-foot narrow-gauge railways

to North America on his Denver and Rio Grande line.

But in 1877, Palmer had a fight on his hands.

Rich silver camps had been discovered in Leadville,

around 80 miles north-west,

and there was a race to reach it by rail.

He faced the most competition from the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe,

a more powerful, more well-financed,

a bigger railroad, who actually got here first.

So they both headed into the canyon,

laying stakes and surveying right alongside each other but,

as you can see, there's only room for one railroad.

Over time, they armed themselves and they actually built forts along

the canyon walls and they aimed guns at each other,

shots were fired back and forth.

They were known to go up to the top of the canyon walls

and throw rocks down at their competitors.

It might injure someone and definitely would disrupt the building of the railroad.

The courts eventually had to step in and the Supreme Court

actually gave the Rio Grande the right of way.

Despite that ruling in Palmer's favour, battle continued.

The Santa Fe sabotaged commerce for the Rio Grande,

leading to more Wild West thuggery.

Trains were commandeered, depots were put under siege

and bullets flew.

Finally, the railroad war was settled by treaty in 1880

and the line extended to Leadville.

Lea, I have to say, for anybody that's not here at the moment,

it's difficult to describe the grandeur of this.

The rock is just towering over us, it rises completely sheer.

It is beautifully lit today.

It just is awe-inspiring.

The word awesome is appropriate today, isn't it?

-Spectacular.

-And the only thing better than a beautiful gorge is one

-with a railroad through it.

-Absolutely.

My Appleton's was enthusiastic about this railroad and tells me that,

"Through the Royal Gorge the track runs for 200ft

"along an iron bridge suspended over the river

"by steel girders mortised into the rock on either side."

An amazing piece of construction.

Absolutely. It's more remarkable that we're still using

the same bridge 146 years later.

This is beautiful. So this is actually

fixed, bolted onto the rock.

-It's remarkable.

-It's one of the great thrills of travelling on a railroad.

But, you know, it takes ingenuity to build rail roads in the West

and these men had vision.

Palmer's Denver And Rio Grande Railroad continued its conquest of

the Rockies and in 1883 connected

with other lines to span the continent.

As the rail network grew,

the trains brought a new breed of traveller to these mountains -

scientists, bent on uncovering their pre-historic secrets.

One of the most bitter battles in scientific history broke out

as two pioneers of palaeontology,

Edward Cope, of Philadelphia's Academy Of Natural Sciences,

and Othniel Marsh, of Yale University,

began rival digs.

Zach Reynolds is president of the Royal Gorge Dinosaur Experience.

So, what is the story, Zach?

Well, they started out as friends.

A rift in their friendship quickly emerged.

Othniel Marsh was a classically trained palaeontologist,

but he was not the gentleman palaeontologist

that Edward Drinker Cope was.

And when Cope invited Marsh to his New Jersey quarry,

to show him what had been found, Marsh made a deal behind his back

-to then acquire those specimens.

-That is scandalous.

-It is.

What were the consequences of the breakdown in this relationship?

Well, it became the most heated scientific rivalry in history...

..and it led to the Bone Wars.

And what were the weapons in the Bone Wars?

Well, believe it or not, the camps here in Canon City

saw such ugly atrocities as stealing each other's bones,

spying on each other, and even, at times, destroying fossils.

That is...that is appalling.

But I suppose, then, this extraordinary competition

must have meant that the development of knowledge here was very rapid.

Their great rivalry fuelled their passion to be

the first to discover so many fossils

and, in the process, they discovered a treasure trove

that stands even in the scientific community today.

Some of the first dinosaurs ever discovered were found in the region around Canon City,

including Allosaurus,

Diplodocus, Apatosaurus

and Stegosaurus.

Edward Cope amassed a vast collection

of 13,000 fossils

and Othniel Marsh's work was praised by Charles Darwin,

as crucial to his theory of evolution.

In the dinosaur park, these amazing creatures have been given life.

Thank you.

To meet the Tyrannosaurus Rex,

I'll need to negotiate a 24-foot-high rope course.

Hold on to this and just step and you'll be fine.

I think it's swaying quite badly now.

Made it to that point.

Whoa, that's a relief!

Moving gingerly across.

IT GROWLS

Well, this IS a good view!

I'm known as a political dinosaur and now I've met my match.

HE ROARS

HE ROARS AGAIN

I must continue my rail journey.

But sadly, Palmer's historic line

was discontinued for passengers in 1967, leaving me high and dry.

I need to get from Canon City to Colorado Springs

and unfortunately there is no train.

But, luckily for me,

there is a 1957 Ford two-door coupe going in my direction.

On the eastern flank of the Rockies lies Colorado Springs,

another creation of railroad tycoon William Jackson Palmer.

A good review in Appleton's for Colorado Springs.

"A flourishing little city 6,000 feet above the sea

"with a fine view of the mountains.

"It contains many fine residences and a pretty opera house.

"In summer the days are warm without being uncomfortable

"and the night is always cool."

The West doesn't sound very wild here.

Indeed, it's almost British in its gentility.

I've heard that the British influences

stem from Palmer's co-founder,

a London physician, Doctor William Bell,

whose friends invested in this New World enterprise.

On the banks of Fountain Creek,

I'm visiting Bell's Victorian stately home,

Breyer Hurst Manor, which became the social centre of its day.

Matt Maybury is museum director.

So I believe this solid and rather opulent house

-was built by William Bell.

-That's correct.

Bell was a physician from Britain,

came to the United States and formed a partnership

with General William Jackson Palmer.

Together they created the Denver And Rio Grande Railroad

and they created the cities of Colorado Springs

and neighbouring Manitou Springs.

In 1868, Bell and Palmer were surveying the area for a railroad

and fell for the scenery and the refreshing Manitou Springs.

Palmer predicted a great resort at the base of Pikes Peak

and a year later purchased 9,000 acres on which to build.

The Victorian spa was founded in 1871 and three months later

the Denver And Rio Grande Railroad reached town.

There was an interest in what the railroads could do to open up

business opportunities in the West, to make community building possible,

and to enrich yourself.

Palmer expressed the vision as he wanted Colorado Springs to be

the best place in the West to build a home.

Yes, because I've come through places like Dodge City and I've been

thinking about gunslingers,

and here I find in my guidebook that there was an opera house here.

So this is a very different sort of West.

It is. And that was part of the vision,

that this would not be your typical western town with gunfighters and saloons.

In fact, alcohol was forbidden in Colorado Springs -

you could not sell it and you could not open a saloon.

Palmer built opulent hotels,

developed the springs and marketed the resort's health benefits

and rail link.

Within a decade of its founding,

Colorado Springs had become a famed retreat,

welcoming 25,000 visitors each summer.

The streets were broad,

which was attractive to people who might come from the east,

and it was a grid pattern, so it was very orderly.

-Did it attract Europeans as well as people from the east of the United States?

-It did.

Many Europeans came to Colorado Springs.

In fact, Colorado Springs had the nickname Little London because there

were so many Brits who came here.

Two of our most famous were Oscar Wilde,

who performed in our opera house,

and Charles Kingsley, the famous author.

Bell's British investors visited to see the fruits of their speculation,

as did British backers of Palmer's railroad.

By the late 1880s, Little London had 2,000 English residents.

Anglophilia helped this elite enclave to flourish

with schools and gentlemen's clubs.

I hear that, incongruous as it seems, they had a cricket club,

and that's exactly where I'm heading.

'It may not be Lord's, but I'm up for a game.'

East of downtown, at Memorial Park, the Colorado Springs Cricket Club,

or Titans, practise twice weekly in the season

and maintain a respectable rank in the Colorado league.

-Howzat!

-Howzat!

-Well played.

-Thank you, guys.

I'm afraid I may have let the side down.

You may have noticed, I'm not much of a cricketer,

but I am impressed that you have had a cricket club here in Colorado Springs

since the late 19th century.

That's fantastic. And obviously you keep it going today.

-Yes, we do.

-There's about 12 clubs here in Colorado

and there's a couple that come down from Albuquerque, New Mexico.

So, yeah, we've got a lot of cricket going on here.

So that's a very different impression than people would have

back in Europe. They would think cricket was extinct, at least in the far west.

So you are very dedicated to it, aren't you?

We are. This is the one sport that I love and this is the one physical

activity that I think I'm really good at.

Is he quite a useful player?

Oh, yeah, he's one of the best players we have in the league right now.

-Really?

-A few hundreds to his name.

And what about you?

Me, well, I'm a bits and pieces player.

From what nationalities is your team drawn?

I'd say about 90% of our players are from India.

We do have anywhere the British have touched,

you know, we have the West Indians, Australians, South Africans,

Sri Lankans, Pakistanis.

Have you ever converted an American to cricket?

We've converted one at least.

He's not playing right now because he's a flight instructor,

so when he's free he comes down and he gets to play.

So I'm going to give you what is known as the cricket test.

During your intervals,

do you eat cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off?

We don't, but we'd love to.

What we do here is pizza.

-Pizza?

-Yeah.

Yeah, this is America, isn't it?

What a pleasure to wake up to Colorado Springs' warm climate

and clean air, and to glimpse from town the most eastern peak in the Rockies.

Named after the explorer Zebulon Pike, who discovered it in 1806,

it inspired an American patriotic hymn still popular today.

# ..for spacious skies

# For amber waves of grain

# For purple mountain majesties

# Above the fruited plain

# America, America

# God shed his grace on thee

# And crown thy good with brotherhood

# From sea to shining sea. #

Thank you very much, choir and Gary, for that.

-Thank you, sir.

-Beautiful, beautiful words.

-Who wrote them?

-Katherine Lee Bates -

and her statue is right behind us.

And what is her connection with Colorado Springs?

Well, she was visiting Colorado College and took an excursion to

the top of Pikes Peak and was inspired by the vistas and penned America The Beautiful.

Katherine Lee Bates was professor of English literature at

Wellesley College in Massachusetts.

In 1893, she travelled 2,000 miles across America for a summer job.

Her journey up and view of Pikes Peak stirred her to write about

the nation's greatness from sea to shining sea

and to appeal to its people's brotherhood.

I mean, obviously it's a terrific celebration of the American landscape.

Does it mean more than that to you?

It does to me, personally, and I think to a lot of Americans.

It speaks of the bounty of America,

how fortunate we are to live on this continent.

But I know she was thinking about the goodness of America and what

the people and the nation stand for,

because the nation exists only because of the people.

Yeah, it appears mainly to be about geography, amber fields of wheat,

purple mountains majesty.

-Yes.

-But "crown thy good with brotherhood."

What do you think she had in mind?

Well, I think she was just reminding us that "crown thy good" -

we presume we have good,

but we have good because we CHOOSE to be good.

And we are brothers in that goodness,

and that is the essence of America.

Do you think America has crowned its good with brotherhood?

That is a very difficult question at these times.

I will say that I believe in my heart that there is still a spirit

of goodness and brotherhood in this country.

I think we get very confused with rhetoric,

we get very confused with doctrinal differences, but, in the end,

we want to be good

and we do believe that we are all brothers and sisters.

# Oh beautiful for patriots' dreams

# That sees beyond the years... #

With Bates's words in my heart,

I make my way to the foot of the famous peak.

# Undimmed by human tears... #

This is Manitou Springs, according to Appleton's,

"situated at the base of Pikes Peak

"and the centre of excursions in the district.

"The summit of Pikes Peak is reached by a cog wheel railway.

"Incredibly, the highest rack railway in the world.

"The view, from 14,000 feet,

"embraces many thousand square miles."

I hope that nothing will cloud my vista of America the beautiful.

The Pikes Peak Cog Railway

is one of the busiest trains I've travelled on so far.

In operation since 1891, it climbs 14,115 feet above sea level

to the most visited mountain in North America.

This is a rather special moment for me.

I've been up the Gornergrat

and the Jungfraujoch railways in Switzerland,

which are extraordinarily impressive,

but I come here to the United States

and this one is going take me even higher.

HORN BLOWS

'Good afternoon, everybody,

'and welcome aboard the Manitou And Pikes Peak Cog Railway.

'I'd like to start today with introductions of the crew aboard.

'At the front of our train is engineer Dick.

'Everybody say, "Hi, Dick."

-PASSENGERS:

-Hi, Dick.

'He's got a big job today, driving this train 8.9 miles,

'all the way to the summit of this mountain, as he's done so many times before.'

Pikes Peak was a landmark for pioneers and explorers heading west

to seek their fortune in the Colorado gold rush.

Before the railway, it was an arduous two-day ascent

and tourists would have travelled by horse-drawn carriage

and mule to the summit.

You see why you have to use a cog railway

because we're now moving up at incredible gradients,

up to one in four,

which means that for every four feet we go forward we're rising one foot

in elevation. A cog underneath the train

is engaging with the teeth in the track

and so we're making steady but grinding progress up the mountain.

The magnificent views which struck Katherine Bates from her carriage

first open up at Glen Cove, at around 11,500 feet.

Oh!

Even though I was prepared for this by the poem,

by the song America The Beautiful, it comes as a surprise to see such

an extraordinary extent of plain stretching to the far horizon.

I'm looking back here towards the state of Kansas,

looking back over much of the journey that I've been making.

-Hello, Steve.

-Hello.

It's a most impressive train ride, I must say.

One of the greats, I think.

Built in 1891, that's very early.

-Whose idea was it?

-Well, it was Zalman Simmons.

He was an inventor and entrepreneur from Wisconsin.

He'd come up here to check on one of his other inventions,

part of a telegraph system,

and when he got to the summit he realised the view was so spectacular

that a lot of people would like to see that.

That's what gave him the good idea to do it.

It took him three years, he did it over the course of 18 months, actually,

throughout that three years. They didn't work during the wintertime.

We still use the same trackbed, everything is still the same as it was.

Yeah. No, it really is a huge achievement.

Now, it's diesel today, which implies that it would have been

steam in the early days, is that right?

That's true, yep. It sure was. For the first 50 or 60 years, in fact.

Steam locomotives are what pushed the passenger cars up to the top.

Well, to have a cog railway

that goes even higher than the Swiss cog railway -

-that really is quite is quite an achievement.

-Yeah, it really is!

You know, don't forget that they actually invented the cog railway in America.

The first cog rail ever built was on Mount Washington in New Hampshire.

-I did not know that.

-And, uh, so, after that,

the Swiss took it over, but we did think of it here first, so...

-And we're in a Swiss-built vehicle today.

-We are, yeah.

And when it came round to building these trains, that was

the place to go. There's only three cog railways in the United States,

so there was no-one building cog trains here.

The cog railway, then, really,

is a fantastic American-Swiss partnership.

It is, yeah. Yeah, it is. That's true.

And the railway saves its most extraordinary moment for last.

As we come towards the summit, we have this 3,000-foot drop over to

my right and the train just looks as if it's going to

peek off the top of the mountain.

Oh, my word.

We are going to the very edge.

That's unbelievable.

Appleton's visitors would have been awestruck,

as are the hundreds of thousands who visit annually today.

The view across five states - Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma,

Wyoming and New Mexico - is breathtaking.

By the time that Katherine Lee Bates, inspired by these views,

wrote about the grandeur and bounty of these lands

in her poem America The Beautiful,

the West had been civilised.

But the United States had fought a Civil War over slavery,

and remained bitterly divided.

It was, perhaps, as a socialist and a feminist,

that she wrote yearningly of her country, "God mend thine every flaw

"and crown thy good with brotherhood."

Many Americans today would echo her wishes.

Next time, I discover how the elements add to opera's drama...

It would be a shame to enclose the theatre

when we are surrounded by such incredible natural beauty.

I'm honoured to be invited to an ancient Native American pueblo.

How long has there been a settlement up here?

We've been here since the beginning of time.

I'll marvel at American steam technology.

My goodness, John, that is enormous.

And watch the earth open below me.

Here we go, over the edge,

and the ground falls away beneath us.