Minneapolis - St Paul 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 SPEAK OWN LANGUAGE

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.

I'm embarking on a new American rail journey that begins and finishes

on the Mississippi River.

It'll take me 1,000 miles from Minnesota's Twin Cities in the north

to Memphis, Tennessee in the south.

-I enjoyed the ride, thank you so much.

-Thank you!

Along the way, I'll step up to the plate with the Slammers...

Oh!

..wade into the cranberry harvest

and become an easy rider on a Harley.

I'll herd ducks in Memphis...

-Don't let them get away!

-Oh.

..serve burgers in Chicago...

2.58, your train's never late.

..and watch bald eagles on the mighty Mississippi.

Divine.

TRAIN HORN BLARES

At the time of my Appleton's Guide,

that Father of the Waters spurred a rapid Industrial Revolution that

attracted migrants from back east and from Europe.

But the paddle steamers were giving way to the locomotives as

the railroads entered a golden age

with their unrivalled hub at Chicago.

I want to discover who were the winners and losers in that period of

seismic change and how their struggles gave birth

to the modern Midwest.

My journey begins in Minnesota's Twin Cities

and follows the Mississippi River

south before crossing into Wisconsin at La Crosse.

I'll head east towards the shore of Lake Michigan at Milwaukee,

then turn south to the Windy City.

I'll travel the length of Illinois, through Centralia, to rejoin

the Mississippi and end

in Memphis, Tennessee.

On this leg, it's a tale of two cities.

I'll explore Saint Paul and Minneapolis,

which lie about ten miles apart.

On the way, I witness a true force of nature.

There wouldn't be a Minneapolis without Saint Anthony Falls.

It allowed the industry to build here that

you couldn't do anywhere else.

I discover the modest background

of one of America's greatest novelists - F Scott Fitzgerald.

He maintained the smouldering contempt of

a peasant for the rich throughout his life.

Feel the rhythm of a great American epic poem.

So you get what sounds to us like a tom-tom beat -

boom-boom, boom-boom, boom-boom... By the shores of Gitche Gumee...

And experience life as a turn-of-the-century tycoon.

-Crystal, I take it?

-Yes.

GLASS CLINKS, HE CHUCKLES

Ah, these people knew how to live.

I'm making my first visit to the so-called Twin Cities of Minneapolis

and Saint Paul and, in my ignorance,

I learnt from Appleton's that they both sit on the Mississippi River

even though it still has 1,800 miles

to meander down to the Gulf of Mexico.

Minnesota is known as the Land of 10,000 Lakes

and the Mississippi threads between them.

Flowing south, the river passes through Minneapolis,

which is the most populous city in Minnesota.

And 14 miles downstream, it reaches the state capital Saint Paul.

I'm taking the Metro to Saint Paul,

which Appleton's tells me is the capital of Minnesota.

"A beautiful city, situated on both banks of the Mississippi.

"It has the State Capitol, an opera house,

"40 churches of various denominations,

"four libraries, three free hospitals."

-PA SYSTEM BEEPS

-Union Depot station.

Once the main station for the Twin Cities,

Union Depot closed in 1971 when

the newly-formed national rail carrier Amtrak

based its services in Minneapolis.

But following a restoration project,

Union Depot has opened its doors once more.

There's been a Union Depot station since 1881,

but this one is less than a century old.

Like many American railroad stations,

it has a somewhat ghostly feel,

but what ghosts!

At one time, 280 trains a day left here from 21 tracks,

and at the height of steam technology,

monstrous locomotives screeched between here and Chicago

in seven hours flat.

Saint Paul ranges over several hills,

and its cathedral stands on top of the highest.

REVERENTIAL TONE: The city bears the name of Saint Paul,

named after a log chapel first consecrated in 1851,

but this is something completely different -

this is early 20th century,

modelled supposedly on French cathedrals,

but with modern technology so that this enormous dome

floats above us over a great, open space.

This cathedral, one of the finest in the United States,

provides an idea of Saint Paul's wealth and importance

before it was rivalled by Minneapolis.

Well, I must say,

that is one of the most challenging church climbs I've done,

but I'm rewarded with a wonderful view over the city of Saint Paul

and it strikes me straight away that this wonderful domed building

is built on a hill high above another wonderful domed building,

that is the State Capitol.

You don't need to be a genius to work out the code -

the church lords it above the state.

The Roman Catholic cathedral was paid for by donations from

the great and the good of Saint Paul,

who located it on their doorstep.

Summit Avenue, Saint Paul, is remarkable for the scale

and quantity of its 19th-century mansions.

The fragrant street trees and gardens

cannot mask the smell of money,

which, in the United States,

was often borne on clouds of smoke and steam from the railroads.

One of the most imposing residences belonged to James J Hill,

the child of Irish immigrants who became one of the mightiest

railroad tycoons in America - the man they called the Empire Builder.

Hello, Craig. I'm Michael.

Welcome to the Hill House.

Thank you very much indeed - what an amazing mansion it is.

Craig Johnson is an expert on JJ Hill.

Was there already railroad development in this area before

-Hill stepped in?

-Yes, there certainly was.

In fact, Hill purchased a bankrupt railway in 1878 with a number of

other investors, so he had seen rail lines come and go

and rise and fall in this area.

I think one of his great geniuses was his expansive vision that

he had and his great ambition to understand every minute detail

of the operation of the railway.

As Hill's empire grew, so did his reputation for ruthlessness.

He earned his moniker the Empire Builder through hard work

and the highest standards.

Talking of metaphors, Hill's house is built on a mount.

Yes, it is. It's one of the many bluffs surrounding downtown

Saint Paul and it was chosen specifically by Hill - that way,

everyone who was in the downtown area could look up

and see who was living on top of the hill.

May we continue the tour?

-Certainly.

-Thank you.

'Hill renamed his company the Great Northern Railway

'and embarked on what he regarded as the great adventure of his life -'

a rail line that would reach across the continent and serve

as the artery for American settlement in the West.

The railway empire started here in Saint Paul and Minneapolis,

then went across Minnesota, northward up to Canada...

and then westward, across the United States

and eventually connecting with Seattle,

which opened up the possibility of trade with Asia

across the Pacific Ocean.

Now, most railroads were financed with the aid

of the federal government,

who allowed a strip of land to be sold off for the benefit

of the railway. Is that how Hill progressed?

The first stretch did have land grants,

but Hill was someone who liked control,

so he didn't want to do that any longer -

he wanted to purchase that land outright and then he could make

full decisions on that whole area, and that's exactly what he did.

Hill's agents advertised in northern Europe for settler families

to buy and develop land along his route.

He offered farming opportunities in the Midwest,

copper mining in the Rockies and logging in the Pacific States.

There were many railway tycoons - what's special about Hill?

Well, I think it's his ability to take a look not only at the area,

to build something that would work for that particular region

and then to get people to populate that area right alongside it.

As he said at the end of his life,

"I've made my mark on the surface of the earth

"and they can't wipe it out."

The streets of Saint Paul retain their genteel Victorian character,

but in the early 20th century,

the age of the Empire Builder gave way to something

altogether more louche.

One of the United States' most popular novelists gave a name

to that era in the 1920s

of prohibition, gangsters, flappers and tycoons -

the Jazz Age.

Some of his works are narrated by an outsider looking in to

a coveted world, and that feeling

of being from the wrong side of the tracks

may have begun when F Scott Fitzgerald

was born here in Saint Paul.

The son of an unsuccessful aristocrat

and an Irish Catholic mother,

Fitzgerald wrote about a generation of

rich, disenchanted youth and its pursuit of an American dream.

The decadence and disappointed ideals of the Roaring Twenties

inhabit his novel The Great Gatsby.

Hello, Joel.

Hi, Michael. Welcome!

'I'm meeting Dr Joel Pace, English professor and Jazz Age aficionado.'

-Good to see you.

-Good to see you, too.

And I'm very thrilled to be at the birthplace of F Scott Fitzgerald.

Looks like an enormous house.

Yes, and in fact Fitzgerald was in only one sixth of this house.

His family was in dire straits.

His father's wicker furniture business was soon

to go out of business, forcing them to move.

What sort of a neighbourhood is this that he was born in to?

This neighbourhood is really occupying the space in between

the beauty and the grand mansions of Summit Avenue and also Rondo,

the historical African-American neighbourhoods.

Fitzgerald is poised right between Summit and Selby Avenue.

And what do you think was the effect on him of being in such a position,

-geographically?

-A lot of his friends were of the set who had their own

family mansions on Summit Avenue,

but Fitzgerald was never quite accepted as one of them.

He maintained the smouldering contempt of the peasant for the rich

throughout his life.

And what was the influence of the African-American neighbourhood?

The influence of jazz.

The jazz that characterised the age flourished in the Rondo,

a few blocks from the favourite haunt of Saint Paul's social elite.

What kind of a place then was the Commodore Hotel?

The Commodore Hotel, when it opened in 1920, was the talk of the town.

Underneath the Commodore was a speakeasy. With the right knock

on the door, you would be ushered into the basement

where there was live jazz,

bathtub gin and, perhaps, if you were just lucky enough,

a little bit of moonshine.

Now, speakeasies, they were the sort of places that attracted gangsters -

-were there gangsters here?

-Absolutely right.

The gangsters were on the second floor.

LIVELY CHATTER

Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda lived in the luxurious Commodore.

The ill-gotten gains of the gangsters who feature

in Fitzgerald's novel

almost certainly funded the glamorous lifestyle

of the stylish hero Jay Gatsby.

-Hello, ladies - may we join you?

-Hi, guys.

-My name's Michael.

-Hello.

Great band.

'The bar of the Commodore has been

'renovated and is once again the place to be and to be seen

'in Saint Paul.' APPLAUSE

Well, ladies - what a pleasure. Cheers.

-Cheers!

-The pleasure is ours.

-Cheers.

May I compliment you on your dress? That is wonderful.

-Tell me about that.

-Thank you.

This was my grandmother's dress.

Do you think she was what we would call a flapper?

Was she one of these, you know, It-girls in the 1920s?

I would have guessed so, yes.

She was definitely someone who liked a good time!

She liked to have fun.

-Hello, guys.

-Hi.

Do you mind if I pop between you for a moment with my martini?

-Not at all.

-Tell me, are you...

You're very young, but are you Fitzgerald fans?

-Big-time Fitzgerald fans.

-No!

-Yeah.

-What's that? What is that?

-A tattoo.

-What is it?

The state of Minnesota with The Great Gatsby cover inside of it.

-That is a pretty extreme way to show your appreciation...

-Yeah.

..of Scott Fitzgerald.

-Hello, sir.

-Hi, how are you?

-May I join you a second?

-Please, yes.

Can I ask you, are you a Gatsby fan?

Or a Fitzgerald fan?

Well, yeah... I don't know if fan's the word.

We live in the neighbourhood and so he's a local boy, right?

I mean, he... He's one of us.

Do you think Fitzgerald gets the American relationship

-with money?

-I absolutely do.

The thing about Fitzgerald is that he understands that we'll never...

We're so puritan, we'll never

quite be comfortable with the extent to which we are motivated by money.

I feel like in a lot of ways he's the quintessential American writer,

we will never be quite comfortable in our skin.

Alcohol and depression took their toll on Fitzgerald,

and in 1940, at the age of 44, he died in Hollywood of a heart attack.

He believed himself a failure, yet today,

his work features on school reading lists the world over.

I think it's time for a little bit of ragtime.

-What are you going to do?

-I think I'm going to go play with the band.

-Wow!

-May as well.

The Jazz Age came to an abrupt end

with the Great Depression of the 1930s.

But here in the Commodore,

something of the spirit of Scott Fitzgerald lives on.

Wow, that was great!

Another day, another cultural experience.

-Hello.

-Hello.

-What's your name?

-Mary, what's yours?

Michael is mine. So, Mary - I'm an adventurous kind of guy...

-OK.

-..and there's something here I've never heard of.

It's a root-beer float.

-Oh, it sounds good to me. You want it?

-Yeah, all right.

-OK, we'll get it.

-All right.

I've no idea what I've ordered.

-Oh!

-Here you go, Michael.

Thank you. What have I let myself in for?

Don't get it on that pretty white shirt!

In my experience, dining in the United States requires you to summon

up all your culinary courage - let's see what this is.

Mmm. This is root beer. Broadly speaking,

it tastes like thinned-out cough mixture

and then it's got some vanilla ice cream with it, and the two

just kind of blend together.

-Do you ever drink this stuff?

-Not really, no.

-No.

I'm not surprised. I'm not surprised!

I think you've made a good life choice!

I'm leaving Saint Paul, taking the Metro to Minneapolis.

-PA SYSTEM:

-A northbound Blue Line train to

downtown Minneapolis is arriving on track number one.

This modern metropolis takes its name

from the Dakota Sioux word "minne",

meaning water, of which there's a great abundance in lakes,

lagoons and the mighty Mississippi.

Minnesota experiences an extreme continental climate, which has led

the cities' inhabitants to devise an ingenious solution.

The weather in Minneapolis can be inclement.

In summer, it can be 40 degrees.

In winter, -18 is not unusual, but never fear,

they have invented this system of glass bridges,

heated and air-conditioned.

Known as the Skyway, the network extends seven miles around the city,

so you can go from your office to a restaurant to the shops without ever

experiencing either heat or cold.

While Saint Paul developed as a trading and commercial hub,

Minneapolis grew as an industrial centre,

due directly to its location.

Appleton's tells me that, "A large part of the city's business

"prosperity is owing to the Falls of Saint Anthony,

"which afford abundant water power for manufacturing.

"The best view is from the centre of the suspension bridge which spans

"the river."

Actually, this one used to carry the railroad

and I can see here the immense power

of the river hemmed in by civil engineering, and it's given rise to

this highly attractive cityscape of semi-derelict factories and mills.

A young entrepreneur named Franklin Steele dammed the east side of

the river and built the first sawmill in 1848.

For the second half of the 19th century,

Sawdust Town led the world in sawmilling,

and from 1880 until 1930,

Minneapolis, the Mill City, also led the nation in flour production.

John Anfinson is a National Park Service superintendent.

-Hello, John.

-Hi, Michael. Great to meet you.

The falls really are in full spate.

They are spectacular, they've been spectacular all year.

What does it mean to Minneapolis to have had the Saint Anthony Falls?

There wouldn't be a Minneapolis without this falls.

It allowed the industry to build here that

you couldn't do anywhere else.

And what was that first industry?

The first industry was lumber.

It was this ancient crop,

just waiting to be harvested by the millers.

They didn't need to go grow it,

they didn't need people to come and plant it,

it was there already for the taking.

Flour milling gradually supplanted the sawmills,

but such intensive use coupled with poor engineering

caused the falls severe damage.

What was this magnificent river like before Europeans came here?

It's hard to imagine, looking at it today, what it was really like.

It was a series of jagged edges of limestone.

If you look over here, you can see some limestone slabs that have

fallen off on that island,

and the falls retreated up the Mississippi because

this limestone cap kept dropping off,

as the sandstone under it was undermined by the falls itself.

How bad did the damage to the river become?

It became so bad that the falls almost went away.

They almost eroded away completely in 1869.

A huge hole formed underneath the limestone riverbed

and collapsed into the river.

So Minneapolis has depended on Saint Anthony's Falls

and it's had to be saved?

It did, and so the Corps of Engineers looked at the falls,

they found out where the edge ended,

and so they said the only way to save it

is to build a wall under the river, about 36ft high,

four-feet wide, the entire width of the river.

A dam under the Mississippi was what was needed.

And does that survive to this day?

It does. It holds back the last tick of the geologic clock

for Saint Anthony Falls.

In the heyday of flour milling,

20 mills stood along a covered canal

through which flowed water drawn from the river above the falls.

Enough flour was ground in one mill

to bake 12 million loaves of bread a day.

Industrial success came at a price, however.

The number of accidents grew rapidly

and that provided Minneapolis with another title -

the artificial limb capital of the world.

I've come to a suburb of the city to visit

a family-owned prosthetics company to hear how that began.

-Hello.

-Hello, Michael. Welcome to Winkley.

'Greg S Gruman is president of the company

'founded by AA Winkley in 1888.'

Who was Mr Winkley?

Mr Winkley was a farmer from about 50 miles south of the Twin Cities

and was injured in an accident on his farm,

we believe by getting kicked by a horse,

broke a bone in his leg that never healed

and suffered an amputation as a result of that.

He received a prosthesis from a company where the representative

would travel up from Chicago, and he was never happy with that.

And there were no full-time prosthetists here in Minneapolis,

so he ended up tinkering and modifying

the prosthesis that he got,

made it more comfortable for himself

and basically got the idea,

"If it works for me, it'll work for other amputees as well."

In the mills and rail yards of Minneapolis,

due to poor working conditions

and the rapid introduction of new machinery,

it wasn't uncommon for workers to lose limbs in industrial accidents.

We have some shots of amputees

in an old catalogue.

This photo shows a railroad conductor doing his job

with his pants leg rolled up, showing his prosthesis.

A foreman on a line crew, he was an engineer,

and they're all posing on-the-job,

and every one of them has a comment underneath.

He says, "I am now able to make my regular run

"just the same as before I lost my leg".

The priority for this man and for all these in the book

was keeping his job, performing his job,

being able to support himself and his family.

It's a remarkable publication.

And maybe just as remarkable, this thing here.

What kind of vintage is that?

This particular one is from the 1930s,

but it was the same as the original patent that Mr Winkley patented.

This one is for an amputation below the knee.

This was loaded with a spring mechanism

through these elastics so that the inner socket

would function independently and go up and down and absorb the shock

of you hitting the floor or the ground,

especially walking over furrowed fields

or an unpaved factory floor or a rail yard

where you're stepping on gravel.

But the technology, even though we view it as an antique,

was revolutionary for its time.

-Hello, Mike.

-Hello.

-Michael.

'Mike Hodges lost his leg in an electrical accident.

'He decided to retrain as an engineer

'specialising in prostheses.'

What are these items that you have here?

These look pretty advanced to me.

These are some of the microprocessor hands.

Go ahead and stick your hand

in there and you can feel the contacts in there.

-And really just the very lightest touch on that contact.

-Right.

Quite a minor impulse for the...

Right, so the movement in your arm from where your fingers move

is what is making the contact there.

That is brilliant. And is this leg similar to the one that you wear?

Mine has a few more bells and whistles.

The prosthetic I wear now has four microprocessors,

an accelerometer and a gyroscope,

so it's adjusting 100 times a second to if I want to

walk fast, walk slow, go uphill, go downhill -

it's constantly making adjustments,

almost before I can actually make the move.

And living in Minnesota, the big part of it is it's 100% waterproof.

So with a little over 10,000 lakes, you're around water quite a bit,

so it's nice to have that. 25 years ago, you'd have to take

your leg off to be able to go in a lake or do something.

You are an inventive guy who, having lost your leg,

has come into the prosthetics business.

Your story is awfully like Mr Winkley's.

You know, I guess it is, when you think about it.

I knew I was going to have to have a prosthetic.

I wasn't going to go in a wheelchair or crutches,

I wanted to get up, get moving,

and I was one of those guys where, even in physical therapy, I was,

"Just give me my stuff, I'll figure it out",

which isn't always the best thing to do, but we do it anyway.

Everywhere you look in the state of Minnesota, there's water.

Here in Minneapolis, this is the largest lake in a city of lakes,

and it's right at the centre.

Minnesota is famous for its lakes, and although Minneapolis is at

the edge of the state, the city is no exception.

This body of water is known in Native American as "Bde Maka Ska",

or Lake Calhoun, and surrounded as it is by buildings,

it's one of the things that makes the city

so very attractive to visitors from all over the United States.

And although I'm not exactly a round-the-world yachtsman,

I think I should take to the water.

-Hello.

-Hey, how's it going?

-Is that my trusty craft?

-Yep, exactly.

Careful when you step in. Have you ever ridden one of these before?

Er, no. Or not for about 58 years.

-LAUGHING:

-58 years? OK.

-You ready?

-Yes.

-Thank you very much.

-Yeah, you're welcome.

-There you go, have fun.

-Thank you.

What could be more pleasant at the end of

a day than to enjoy the sunset over the water

in this lovely city?

It's a busy morning in Minneapolis, and I'm up early to resume my tour.

I'm ready for breakfast in one of Minneapolis' favourite haunts.

This must be the narrowest diner I've ever been in.

And there's no room at the counter,

so I guess we just stand here, do we? OK.

Originally a storage shed,

made from a corrugated roof over an alleyway,

this building has been used as an eating place since 1937

and became Al's Diner in the 1950s.

Right, that seat is yours, sir.

That one is mine. Thank you very much.

I will smear the bacteria.

MICHAEL LAUGHS

This is a very thin diner.

-Very, very thin.

-This is how big Americans were back in 1950.

-How many pancakes do you want?

-How many do you recommend?

-Two.

-Two.

-You've got to keep that girlish figure.

MICHAEL LAUGHS

-Short while he blows!

-Short while he blows.

'Doug Grina still operates a system of credit

'that dates back to the time when the diner catered for workers

'from the nearby railway yard.'

These books you see down here, those are prepaid credit for regulars.

And it started when Al would come in in the mornings and do prep work,

he would have railroad workers come in about 4.30 in the morning.

He wasn't ready to open, but he'd have sweet rolls and coffee

for them and he'd ask them to write down what they ate.

And he learned very quickly, better get the money first.

Right. Are you a regular?

I am not. This is my first time here.

And what's brought you here? What made you think of coming?

-All of my friends.

-Obviously, it's a great novelty,

having such a narrow diner, but is the food good too?

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

And you get cabaret thrown in from behind the counter, don't you?

-Voila, your steaming heap.

-Thank you very much indeed.

-Nearly arrived in my lap.

-This here is real maple syrup.

Squeezed from trees.

Sounds plausible.

Swimming in butter, glued with maple syrup.

Stuffed with fruit.

Mm. Amazing.

I'm taking the metro south

to explore the earliest period in the history of the Twin Cities,

when European fur traders and trappers began to trade

with Native Americans.

Appleton's tells me that the first building in Saint Paul

was erected in 1838 and for several years thereafter,

it was simply an Indian trading post.

The first treaty with the Sioux Indians,

throwing their lands open to settlement, was made in 1837.

I'm on my way to Fort Snelling,

which stands on a cliff overlooking the confluence

of the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers.

It's a sacred place for the Dakota Sioux Indians.

The fort was built by the United States Army in 1825,

when white men and Native Americans traded cordially.

-Hello, Tom.

-Michael, how are you? Welcome.

Tom Pfannenstiel manages the historic site,

reconstructed as it was in 1825.

Tom, what was the reason for building Fort Snelling here?

Part of the reason for building the fort on the confluence of

the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers

was basically to protect the fur trade.

My guidebook talks about a treaty in 1837 with the Native Americans,

with a view to getting them to give up land for settlement.

That sort of treaty, was it fair?

None of the treaties were fair that were done here

over a period of time.

Essentially, the US government brought Dakota leaders

to a location, promised them goods, annuities,

money and asked the Dakota leaders to sign those treaties,

which opened up tens of thousands of acres of their homeland,

and really, none of the promises that were made

by the US government were carried out.

When Minnesota became a state in 1858,

almost all the territory formerly occupied by Native Americans

was in the hands of the United States government,

leading to what are known as the Indian Wars of the 1860s.

And how was war actually triggered?

War was triggered when the Dakota were moved off this land,

moved to a very thin strip of land in the southern part of Minnesota.

They were to basically act as farmers and not really live

their lives as they did here.

And annuities did not come, there was a famine,

they were begging the army to open up the warehouses for food,

which they didn't,

which led to a really explosive situation in 1862.

There were some Dakota who wanted to fight, wanted to fight back

at the army, the army responded,

there were hundreds and hundreds killed on both sides.

These beautiful lands belonged to Native Americans, but when Europeans

arrived here, hungry for land and wealth,

they behaved as though the territory was theirs.

It was an appalling clash of culture,

the Europeans with their mass production and their rifles

and their steam engines and their railways,

the Native Americans advanced philosophically,

but technologically backward.

What happened to the Native Americans

is one of the darkest chapters in United States' history,

something for which even today they have difficulty in atoning.

The governor of Minnesota, Alexander Ramsay,

declared all Dakota must be exterminated

or driven out of the state.

Thousands were imprisoned and 38 were killed

in the largest mass execution in United States history.

In 1862, 1,700 women and children

were forced to march 150 miles to Fort Snelling,

where they were interned in a camp

before being exiled to western reservations.

Ramona Kitto Stately is an expert

in American-Indian culture and language.

Ramona, we meet in a delightful spot.

You are Dakota, is that right?

-Yes, I am.

-What is the significance to the Dakota of Fort Snelling?

Fort Snelling is actually the place of our creation.

For us, this is the centre of our universe.

We call it Bdote.

It is the place of our genesis,

but it is also the place of our genocide.

The people who were brought to Fort Snelling,

the non-combatant Dakota people,

they were housed in what's been described as a concentration camp.

Is that a fair expression?

If you look at what the determinants of

a concentration camp are, it meets every single one of the criteria.

And yes, it was a place of holding for our Dakota women and children,

under very harsh conditions, for the purpose of exile and removal.

They would have done it probably sooner,

except this Bdote was frozen.

So they had to keep them here for six months.

And the Dakota were literally shipped out.

The women were shipped out, right here at this landing.

They were boarded on steamboats and taken to Crow Creek and then

eventually Santee, which is where my people live in exile today.

-In Nebraska?

-Yes.

-A long way from here.

-A long way from here.

What do you think were the consequences for the Dakota

of the Indian War of 1862?

The consequences were exactly what they were meant to be,

which was exile, loss of land.

There's no faster way to bring the hearts of people to

their knees than to separate them from their language, their culture,

their medicines, their food supply,

their water AND all of their ancestors,

who are buried along this beautiful river valley.

Since 2002, every other year,

descendants of the Dakota prisoners have retraced

the steps of the forced march to Fort Snelling.

Placing prayer flags at every mile, singing traditional songs,

and telling stories of their ancestors.

One of the ways for us to even be able to begin that healing is to

bring back the language, to bring back the culture, to remember,

to put back together the oldest cultural knowledge

on this continent.

Go back to that point where our mothers lost their voice

and reclaim it.

European migration to the Midwest eased during the Dakota War,

but grew steadily after the Dakota were exiled.

I've come to South Minneapolis and the American Swedish Institute,

where I'm meeting current president Bruce Karstadt

to find out how this community keeps its heritage alive.

-Bruce, hello.

-Michael, welcome to the American Swedish Institute.

-A pleasure to have you here.

-Thank you. Great to be here.

-Let's go up. Yep.

-What a pile.

This extravagant French-style chateaux was built by

Swedish newspaper baron Swan Turnblad,

who left it to the Institute

to be used as a museum and cultural centre.

So, when was the peak period

of Swedish immigration into the United States?

It was between 1860 and 1910.

About 20% of Sweden's population

or 1.2 million of a five million population country

left Sweden for principally North America and the United States.

The majority of these emigrants were farmers,

attracted to Minnesota by its familiar landscape and climate.

They built hospitals, churches, and schools

that upheld Swedish values and reinforced ties with their homeland.

And what about food?

When Swedes came here,

packed in their trunk were recipe cards and pots and pans

and other kitchen utensils.

You will find cherished recipes for Swedish meatballs,

for baked rye bread, lutefisk

and all sorts of other delicacies that were important to them.

-What on earth is lutefisk?

-Reconstituted dried cod.

So, drying of fish, like meat, is a way of preserving food.

And so, one way in which today's Swedish Americans

honour that tradition and that past is

by having lutefisk at Christmas time.

It's closer to Midsummer than Christmas, but tonight,

the Institute is holding a special dinner and lutefisk is on the menu.

Nordic food specialist Patrice Johnson is head chef

and I'm going to lend a hand.

Hello. Are you Patrice?

-I am.

-I'm Michael.

-Hi, Michael. Nice to meet you.

I've come to help you... Help you, make lutefisk.

I'm happy for your help.

Lutefisk kind of makes itself.

-Oh.

-But you have to keep an eye on it.

-OK, good.

-So you can help me with that.

Now, what I've heard about this dish does not encourage me at all.

Do you know how it's made?

Well, I believe you start with dried cod, is that right?

It is, that's true. And then they soak it in lye.

Isn't that stuff you use for making soap?

Yeah. That's the same stuff.

But you can see that the lye in the water

has made it a little bit gelatinous.

Oh. It has.

Ah, I'm relieved. Not too smelly at this point.

I'll pop that in there, shall I?

Yeah. And we are going to put some salt and some white pepper on this.

And I'm going to put a little bit of allspice on there as well.

Allspice is indicative of lutefisk.

Now, that is really nice.

-Isn't that nice?

-Yeah, yeah.

I'm relieved that we've got some of that in there as well.

'The fish is covered in unsalted butter and steam cooked

'in the oven until it flakes.

'Overcook it and it turns to mush.'

Goodbye, little fishy.

'30 minutes later and it's ready to serve.'

Smell it.

MICHAEL COUGHS

Yeah... I-I can smell it.

'Outside in the garden,

'13 hungry Swedish-Americans are waiting to tuck in.'

Hey, everybody. The lutefisk is here.

THEY CHEER

Happy Christmas to one and all.

There we are. You're going to have a big piece.

-You're a brave man.

-Thank you.

'Lutefisk is traditionally served with boiled potatoes and either

'a butter or a cream sauce.'

Would you like some fish with that cream?

-Sorry.

-I did put rather a lot of cream on.

Also to deaden the taste.

Hm! THEY LAUGH

Hm!

What a very interesting texture.

-Memorable, isn't it?

-Memorable.

'I'm not alone.

'Not everyone here is a lutefisk fan.'

Oh. Oh, you're exporting...

-Yes.

-..yours.

Are you not too keen on it?

No, I'm not, but I love making it.

I've made it for over 40 years.

When we lived away from Minnesota,

I would have it shipped in overnight,

so he could have it for Christmas Eve.

And you really do like it.

I do like it. Yes. Absolutely.

I grew up with it and, yeah,

it brings me back to Christmases of long ago

and parents and grandparents.

-Now, that's nice.

-Yes.

'No Swedish feast would be complete without aquavit.'

Oh, thank you very much.

'A spirit flavoured with herbs and spices

'first distilled in Sweden in the 15th century.'

We are going to do a skol.

THEY SING IN SWEDISH

Skol!

Skol!

And it's not over yet.

The Swedish fiddle group Spelmanslag

plays songs based on traditional melodies,

sung by Swedish maidens to their cattle in the pastures.

And by miners and loggers as they walked to work.

My dear American-Swedish friends,

what a memorable evening this has been and thank you so much.

Skol!

-ALL:

-Skol.

APPLAUSE

I'm up early and back on the Metro,

which is taking me out to the west of the city

to a place that has been on the tourist map for over a century

and is still attracting visitors today,

thanks in part to its literary connections.

Appleton's tells me that the Minnehaha Falls,

"which were immortalised by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,

"are picturesquely situated, but hardly merit the prominence

"that Mr Longfellow's poem has obtained for them."

Nonetheless, I'll go and have a look.

Where would I be now if I'd been put off by mediocre reviews?

In the early 19th century,

a pioneering landscape photograph of the falls gained

wide circulation in the United States.

It may have inspired Longfellow to write his epic poem,

The Song Of Hiawatha.

Enchanted by the name Minnehaha,

Longfellow used it for his Native American hero's beautiful lover.

To hear more, I'm meeting Charles Calhoun,

who has written a book about Longfellow.

Welcome to Minnehaha Falls, Michael.

Thank you very much. Did Longfellow come here to study...?

No, no, no. He was very desk-bound in his very beautiful house

in Cambridge, Massachusetts, near Harvard, where he had been teaching,

but he had a wonderful imagination

and he could take what he read in these books about Indian legends

and more and this wonderful array of Indian place names

and personal names and turn it into a great epic.

The poem tells of the life of Hiawatha,

a mythical Native American warrior and leader,

from his birth to manhood,

and the tragedy of his love for the beautiful Minnehaha.

Hiawatha performs brave and magical deeds, slays foes

and woos his lover, but she dies.

He quits his people, sailing into the sunset.

Do you think he had an intention with the poem?

Yes, he was one of these 19th-century poets

who wanted to write a great bardic epic that would summarise

the history of this country and bring its peoples,

its varied peoples, together.

And he saw that the obvious material wasn't in New England,

it was in the West, where the Native Americans were still thriving.

The Song of Hiawatha became an instant bestseller

and made Longfellow one of the wealthiest

and best-known authors of his day.

But many Americans criticised his choice of subject matter.

As you read it,

what attitude from him towards Native Americans do you infer?

Well, I think he was sympathetic, certainly,

or he wouldn't have launched such a huge project, but he,

like many people in his time,

he saw them as noble savages and he stressed the noble part of it.

Yet, for most Americans at that time,

it was the savage side of that phrase that really predominated.

It is so strange, the poem comes out and has this huge readership,

yet within a generation,

so many of the Native Americans in this country have been wiped out.

Tell me about the sound of the poem. It has a very specific metre.

Yes, it's written in a metre called trochaic tetrameter.

Which means a strong beat, a soft beat,

a strong beat, a soft beat, over four measures.

So you get what sounds to us like a tom-tom beat.

Boom-boom, boom-boom, boom-boom, boom-boom.

"By the shores of Gitche Gumee."

You might be surprised to know that I,

brought up maybe 4,500 miles from Minnehaha Falls,

was taught the poem at school.

Excellent. That makes my day to hear that.

And how much of it do you remember?

Ah! THEY LAUGH

Well, what I remember is precisely the beat.

-It's hypnotic.

-I remember the metre.

But now, it looks like you've got a copy of it there.

Yes, a very nice early edition.

-Please, help yourself.

-Thank you very much.

"There the ancient Arrow-maker Made his arrow heads of sandstone.

"With him dwelt his dark-eyed daughter,

"Wayward as the Minnehaha,

"With her moods of shade and sunshine,

"Eyes that smiled and frowned alternate,

"Feet as rapid as the river,

"Tresses flowing like the water,

"And as musical a laughter.

"And he named her from the river, From the waterfall he named her.

"Minnehaha, Laughing Water."

-Well done.

-It's lovely. Absolutely lovely.

I could read from the railroad timetable now, if you'd like.

Now the 0800 passes, now the 0805 approaches.

-Choo-choo.

-Choo-choo.

At the time of my guidebook,

freight accounted for the largest share of railroad

business in the United States, as it does today,

but a new era of opulent passenger travel was dawning.

Although I've grown fond of the Metro,

it's not hard to imagine a more luxurious railway carriage.

In the heyday on the railroads

between the Twin Cities and Chicago -

what was known as the Milwaukee Road - prestigious trains ran.

Special cars catered for the pre-jet jet set -

the rich, the famous, the glamorous.

I've come to a rail yard in north-east Minneapolis,

home to a collection of beloved relics of the Milwaukee Road.

Rail enthusiast Steve Sandberg will be my guide to the golden age

of luxury train travel.

-Hello, Steve.

-Welcome to Minnesota, the Land of 10,000 lakes.

MICHAEL LAUGHS

And of beautifully restored rolling stock.

How come they are in such great condition?

Well, they've been wonderfully restored

by the members of the Friends of the 261,

which is a non-profit railway heritage organisation,

here in the United States.

What was the origin of luxury travel on American railroads?

Well, really, post-1900 was when most of your families,

the Carnegies, the Vanderbilts, the Woolworths,

all of those famous families,

owned fleets of private Pullman cars.

It's like a corporate jet in today's era.

And all of America's wealthiest people

would have not only one but several Pullman private cars.

Pullman is an iconic name and brand,

-may we start with the Pullman car, please?

-Absolutely.

-Come this way.

-Thank you.

With the advent of the sleeper car,

express transcontinental rail travel was reduced from weeks

to a few days.

-Thank you very much.

-Welcome aboard the Lambert's Point.

Ah! Beautiful luxury.

Well, if we come this way, we've got bedrooms, dining room and kitchen.

-Come on in.

-Oh, look at this one.

-And this is the master bedroom.

Oh, beautiful. Let's bounce on the bed.

-These people knew how to live.

-Yes, absolutely splendid.

This is how some of America's wealthiest and famous people

would have travelled cross-country at the turn of the century.

'Then, like today, the dining car was the heart of life on board.'

Ah, yes. Look at this.

Isn't that beautiful?

'And on the Lambert's Point,

'private chefs prepared everything from scratch,

'from turtle soup to porterhouse steak.'

-Crystal, I take it?

-Yes.

GLASS CLINKS

BELL RINGS

So, when the airplane starts to compete in the post-war years,

how do the railroads respond?

Well, right after World War II,

railroads started to go with more luxury travel for the masses.

They thought that they would actually just put

the airline industry right out of business.

From the mid-1940s,

railroad companies all over the United States

launched new high-speed services with Pullman cars

to attract upmarket passengers and business travellers.

On the Pennsylvania Railway,

they've put a new cheap-fare luxury train into service

between Chicago and New York.

It's the company's answer to the competitive Western Railway scheme.

And though the fares are reduced, the comfort has increased.

They're trying the Pullman appeal.

Here in the Twin Cities, they went one better.

The Hiawatha was an entirely streamlined train

with a distinctive orange and grey livery,

including the world's first double-decker car,

topped with a glass dome,

custom-built for the Milwaukee Road rail company.

What amazes me about these cars is the size.

They are so wide, they are so high, and of course,

you've got the beautiful vista of the countryside passing.

Yes, this car, when it was built,

it was the heaviest passenger rail car ever built, at 248,000lb.

16ft tall, 85ft long.

So, what does the Hiawatha train really consist of?

Well, in 1934,

the concept was developed for a high-speed train

that would operate at speeds of 110-120mph,

from Minneapolis to Chicago.

There was two each day that ran out of Minneapolis and two that departed

each day out of Chicago.

They had the morning Hiawatha and the afternoon Hiawatha.

And it's so interesting to see the way that luxury

has been developed for a fairly mass market here.

So, this was competing with the airplane?

Yeah, this was all about space, luxury, and speed,

and when you were travelling in 1948 on an airplane,

it was very cramped, it was very noisy,

and it was an unpressurised cabin that didn't go very far

between fuelling stops.

Frankly, I need no more persuading.

I'm booked on the afternoon Hiawatha out of Minneapolis,

which today is pulling a piece of railroad history.

-Hello.

-Good morning. Welcome aboard.

-Thank you.

And I've bagged the back seat for the ride of a lifetime.

Designed by famed industrial designer Brooks Stevens,

the Cedar Rapids car is one of only four

Skytop observation parlour lounges ever built,

and the only one still gracing the rails today.

And so, a dream come true.

Riding on the tracks of the old Milwaukee Road in a Cedar Rapids

observation car from 1948.

That moment in history

when the design of airliner and train collided

to produce this beautiful object.

The airlines won the war against the railroads.

But in the modern world, when the greatest luxury is quality time,

you're hard pressed to beat this.

The phenomenal growth of Minneapolis and Saint Paul from nothing

to major cities resulted from the power of the waters

and the enterprise of the American tycoon.

Wealth and luxury mesmerised F Scott Fitzgerald and the American public.

The land and the waters had once belonged to the Native American.

The poet Longfellow was far ahead of his time in showing respect,

even if a little patronising,

for a civilisation that was squashed

as the railroads rolled west.

Next time, on my travels, I immerse myself in Native American culture...

-How do you like it?

-I love it.

-Yeah?

TRAIN HORN BLARES

..take a crash course in lacrosse.

-Oh.

-That's all right. We got a helmet for a reason.

CHUCKLING: Didn't even see it.

I bury myself in a Thanksgiving harvest.

We are moving a vast number of cranberries.

And find out how the railroad spread the joy

of the greatest show on Earth.

Here comes the train and there's an elephant trunk

sticking out of one of it,

there's a clown sitting on the vestibule of another.