Minnesota - Wisconsin Great American Railroad Journeys

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

with my reliable Appletons' Guide.

Published in the late 19th century,

Appletons' General Guide to North America will direct me

to all that's

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.

TRAIN HORN

My rail journey along the Upper Mississippi has brought me

to a part of the river where Appletons' says there's

"grandeur and sublimity in every mile.

"It becomes monotonous after a time,

"the eye becoming surfeited with too much beauty."

In my travels around the United States, I've learned that you can't

understand the nation's history or even its psyche without grasping

the geography of its rivers.

With 31 states draining into the Mississippi

and two Canadian provinces, this is the mightiest of all the waterways.

I want to understand how white settlers altered its flow,

supplanted its population, and introduced new customs.

I started my journey in Minnesota in the Twin Cities.

I'm now travelling alongside the Mississippi River

before crossing into Wisconsin at La Crosse.

I'll then head east

towards the shore of Lake Michigan at Milwaukee.

Turning south, I'll spend time in Chicago

and then travel the length of Illinois via Centralia.

I'll rediscover the Mississippi

as I end my journey in Memphis, Tennessee.

On this leg, I'll begin in Red Wing, Minnesota,

on the trail of a renowned storyteller.

I'll then cross the Mississippi river to

the Wisconsin city named after what is now an international sport.

I'll visit an all-American tourist magnet,

before ending in Portage,

where I discover a feat of 19th-century engineering.

On my travels, I immerse myself in Native American culture...

-How do you like it?

-I love it.

-Yeah?

..take a crash course in lacrosse...

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

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.

My first stop will be Red Wing, which Appletons' tells me is

"beautifully situated on a broad level plain

"at the foot of majestic bluffs.

"A favourite resort in summer

"for hunting, bathing, fishing and sailing."

I want to find out what the place was like

before the tourists arrived,

when the settlers wrestled with raw nature.

Named after a Native American chief, Red Wing is on tribal land.

Like much territory west of the Mississippi,

this area was bought by the United States from France in 1803,

as part of the Louisiana Purchase.

Within 50 years,

white settlers began to arrive in this unknown wilderness.

These were the determined pioneering Americans

whose lives were made famous by the popular children's TV series

Little House On The Prairie.

Many of us grew up watching the show,

which was based on the books of Laura Ingalls Wilder.

The stories reflect her own settler childhood,

just across the river from here.

Pamela Smith Hill is the author of Laura's biography.

-Hello, Pamela.

-Hello. How nice to meet you.

Michael. What sort of life was her father trying to have?

I think he wanted a very...uncomplicated life.

He liked being in the wild. He liked being surrounded by wild animals.

He was a hunter and a trapper,

and I think that's a love that he instilled in his daughter, Laura.

Laura's first book, Little House In The Big Woods,

was inspired by the cabin where she was born,

a replica of which stands here today.

It sounds rather desolate for a childhood.

I think so and if you drive out from Pepin today,

it's about a six-mile drive

on a windy road, and if you think about all the miles and miles

of wood, that makes this cabin seem even more isolated.

You can really get a sense for how alone the family was out here.

So what happened to the family?

The family moved from here outside of Pepin

when Laura was about two years old

and they eventually settled in Indian Territory

on the Osage Diminished Indian Reserve in about 1869.

They lived there for a couple of years and then moved back to Pepin,

and when Laura was about five or six,

she was back here and Little House In The Big Woods is based on

her memories of the second time the family lived there.

Charles Ingalls had this incurable wanderlust,

and he sent the family further west

after a few years here in Pepin.

The family shifted between Wisconsin, Minnesota,

Kansas and South Dakota,

all before Laura was a teenager.

I think her overriding theme is an American family, moving west,

struggling against adversity to find the Promised Land.

But beyond that,

there are themes that deal with courage in the face of adversity,

how to deal with poverty. There's also the sense of Laura growing up.

The family was like thousands of others on this new frontier -

self-sufficient and hard-working people,

setting forth, seeking success.

In Pepin, each year the community celebrates those times

with a festival devoted to Laura.

UPBEAT FIDDLE MUSIC

-Good day.

-Good day. That is the darndest instrument I ever saw.

-What is it?

-It's a cigar box fiddle.

Something that folks would make in the United States here

if they couldn't afford a nice violin.

-Where did you get this one from?

-I made that.

-Wow!

That is extraordinary. I mean, it's not exactly a Stradivarius, is it?

No, sir. Not a Stradivarius!

Does that simple life appeal to you at all?

Oh, without the health care and all the doctors and medication

and things, it would have been tough. It was a hard life.

If you cut yourself with your axe, what do you do?

What happens when your wife is delivering a baby and you're out

there all alone in the snow storm?

It was very difficult.

-How do you do?

-What is the appeal, do you think, of Laura Ingalls?

Why are these people gathered here to celebrate her?

It's a simple, innocent time.

-And I think all of us need that in life.

-A very tough time.

Laura's mother wouldn't have known any different.

She only knew she had to get the meal on the table.

They only knew they had to get the haystack.

They only knew they had to get the crop in.

This is a very enjoyable and also very impressive festival.

There is a genuine enthusiasm

for their local heroine, Laura Ingalls Wilder.

And the tribute is paid in all sorts of ways,

not least by so many people wearing the bonnet.

And the settlers also learned a thing or two

from the Native Americans

who'd known these lands for thousands of years.

Hello.

-Now, what are you offering here?

-We're throwing tomahawks.

-We are, are we?

-Yes, we are.

-All right. And who would have done that?

Native Americans, frontiersmen, hunters.

Any ideas on technique?

Keep your wrists straight, bring it up over your head,

-step into it like you're throwing a ball.

-OK.

-Wow!

-Perfect!

No, over the top, that one.

Right idea.

Oh, that was a poor one.

Sadly, just beginner's luck!

Returning to Red Wing, I'm picking up the Empire Builder service,

which runs over 2,000 miles across North America.

Today, though, I'm travelling only about 60 miles.

Next stop - Winona, Minnesota. Appletons' says,

"A prosperous little city, one of the most important

"lumber-distributing points on the upper Mississippi.

"As a grain shipping point, it ranks amongst the first."

You can be sure that if it was a strategic place for the white man,

it was also precious for the Native American.

The settlers founded Winona in 1851.

And by the end of the century, there were more millionaires per head here

than in any other city in the United States.

The extreme wealth was generated by the lumber and wheat industries

that sprang up on the river.

To find out what happened to that industry, I'm meeting Curt McCurl,

who maintains a wildlife refuge on the Mississippi.

-Hello, Curt.

-Welcome to the refuge.

-It's wonderful to be here.

-It's beautiful weather.

-Great day to get out on the water.

-Beautiful spot. Let's go.

All right, hop on.

At over 2,300 miles long,

the Mississippi is the greatest river in North America.

And it teems with wildlife.

Curt, this is the most beautiful riverscape.

Is this a natural environment we're looking at?

Well, it's a combination of natural and man-influenced landscape here.

The water level is unnaturally high now compared to previous times,

before the lock and dam, because they had to raise the water level

to maintain the navigation channel.

So the mighty Mississippi was not navigable?

It was not navigable year round before the locks and dams, no.

It would be subject to extreme water level changes.

There would be dry land here where you couldn't even get one of these

boats through in certain places.

You're talking about an extraordinarily large project there.

-Who undertook that work?

-That was the US Army Corps of Engineers.

They built all the locks and dams

from Saint Louis all the way to Minneapolis-Saint Paul.

In the 1860s,

the Corps cleared the river of debris such as log and tree stumps.

For that heavy-duty work, they used impressive twin-hulled boats

which became known as Uncle Sam's Tooth Pullers

because of their capacity to extract whole trees.

Did the river stand a chance against the railroads?

Apparently it did, cos it's still here and still functioning.

Are you moving freight on the river on the Upper Mississippi today?

Oh, yeah. There's lots of freight going up and down the river today.

It's still a very viable source of transportation.

If we were lucky today, what wildlife might we see?

If we're lucky today, we'll see some pelicans and some bald eagles.

Is it a healthy bald eagle colony?

At one point, we had single digits for eagle nests on this refuge,

and now we are up over 300.

Use of the river for navigation

takes its toll on vegetation and wildlife.

The winds that blow across these vast stretches of water

make it hard for plants to regenerate.

So as part of the environmental restoration programmes,

the Corps and the Fish and Wildlife Service and other agencies have come

in and built these man-made islands to help break up that fetch.

Trees can grow again and vegetation gets re-established,

so the water is cleared up,

it's not muddy and it continues

the ongoing cycle of vegetation and habitat creation.

The light is wonderful. The colours are beautiful.

The water is still.

We can hear nothing but the sound of our own boat.

Divine!

-Some pelicans up ahead of us.

-Yes. I wondered what those

white things were. I thought they were too big to be egrets.

They're pelicans, are they?

One of Curt's jobs is to check the growth of the vegetation on which

the wildlife depends.

Tool of the trade.

And grab some vegetation.

-Is it this stuff you want to look at?

-It is.

Anything under the water there.

Lots of wild celery hanging on that rig - that's a good sign.

So this long leaf right here is wild celery.

That's good. We want to see that.

Favourite duck food for the canvasback.

A sort of spaghetti for ducks.

-So the islands are doing their job?

-The islands are doing their job.

And I think I'm looking at a happy man.

Pretty happy, pretty lucky!

The name Mississippi

comes from a Native American word for "great river."

The Dakota Sioux Indians

had lived around Winona since the 17th century.

But settlers were hungry for land,

and the US negotiated two treaties with Dakota tribes

to buy all but a fraction of their lands.

The United States broke those agreements

and there followed a century of hatred.

Appletons' perfectly describes

the scenery that I see here around Winona.

"Bluffs with precipitous fronts,

"worn by the weather into most fantastic shapes,

"the river almost filled with islands."

Winona was apparently a young Dakota maiden who loved a young hunter.

But she leapt over the precipice to her death rather than marry the man

of her parents' choice.

The tribes have experienced much suffering.

And today, groups of people gather

to understand the past and to be reconciled.

TRADITIONAL SINGING

Today it's the annual Dakota Gathering, a modern-day pow wow.

It's a gorgeous display of colour, dance, and joy.

What we have here is a gathering of many Native American tribes,

but not at all exclusive.

There are lots of non-Native Americans here as well.

And the dancing is not by way of a performance or a display -

it's an invitation to the non-Native Americans to learn about the customs

and to participate, to join in friendship and to heal old wounds.

-Hello, Michael.

-Hello.

You can join me in circle in a tribal dance.

-Of course. Thank you. Lead the way.

-All right.

-How do you like it?

-I love it.

-Yeah? Good.

-Not too bad, right?

-Not too bad at all.

Despite the treachery of the past,

these days, there's a unifying spirit.

Aaron Camacho is the event's president.

-Hello, Aaron.

-Hello, how are you?

-What a wonderful day.

-Thank you!

How long have you been having these gatherings?

It's the 13th annual gathering.

And what's the idea behind it?

The idea behind it is reconciliation, right?

When they were celebrating the 150th anniversary of, you know,

Minnesota being here, they wanted to have Native Americans come in

and just kind of dress up for them,

and they realised that that wasn't quite equitable.

And so what we decided to do as a city is make sure

that we're representing Native American culture

in an accurate and appropriate way.

What do you think you've achieved?

A lot. If you think about it, in the circle,

there are people of all different nationalities,

and we were all able to do this in a peaceful way,

and everybody was smiling together.

Think about the 1960s, you know?

That wasn't happening.

Tensions between the Dakota and United States have eased,

but still remain because of the bitter legacy.

When the government reneged on its land deal with the Dakota in 1862,

war broke out.

600 civilians and United States soldiers

and up to 100 Dakota Indians were killed,

and a further 38 Dakota were hanged.

To find out more, I want to talk to Danny Seaboy.

-Hello. May I tuck in here for a moment?

-Sure.

You've been MC-ing today. Congratulations.

Oh, well, I've been doing it for 14 years.

Danny's great-great-grandfather

was a chief who signed one of the treaties.

After 1862 came about,

then a decision was made by Congress

to eliminate the land that we were given along the Minnesota River.

It took a lot of harsh feelings to what happened to us.

So there's uprising.

When we left here, knowing that signing this...

his name, or using his X and witnessed it, that's who he was.

It was for the betterment of the people that he was a chief for.

And he felt very...

betrayed.

Today, despite everything,

Danny wants to get along with his neighbours, whatever their history,

to live happily, to understand each other.

With all that the Native Americans have suffered,

how can you be so big-hearted, so generous?

I guess I've been through a lot. We don't all have the point of hate.

We don't all have a point of revenge.

But if we can make them understand that

we've got to forget this.

Given all that the Native Americans have endured,

I've been struck by the generosity of spirit displayed by

their representatives here today.

But this has been a gathering of people on all sides

who wish to be reconciled.

They've thrown a pebble in the water.

And the question is, how far will the ripples spread?

Picking up my journey,

I'm about to leave the state of Minnesota and cross into Wisconsin.

I'll be leaving the train at La Crosse, Wisconsin,

which Appletons' tells me

"is a city on the east bank of the Mississippi,

"where the train crosses over the river

"and follows the west bank amidst remarkably picturesque scenery."

I shall be intrigued to visit a little city with such a sporty name.

-PA SYSTEM:

-'Attention, ladies and gentlemen. We are now approaching

'our next station stop of La Crosse, Wisconsin.'

This had long been a Native American settlement.

French fur traders came here in the late 17th century.

But it was New Yorker Nathan Myrick

who started a trading post here in 1841.

The railroad arrived within 20 years,

and La Crosse quickly became

an important commercial and transport hub.

And it has strong ties to the sport of lacrosse.

At the University of Wisconsin,

I'm meeting the president of the men's team, Joel Vitrano.

-Hello, Joel.

-Hello.

-I'm Michael.

-Nice to meet you, Michael.

Good to see you.

The sport of lacrosse, how was that invented or discovered?

Well, when the first fur traders came to the area initially,

they saw the Native Americans playing the game.

-The Indians played it the way you do today?

-No, not at all.

The game was originally played with

upwards of thousands of players at a time.

It was a game for combat.

They would use it to train and settle disputes.

-So they were hacking away at each other with their sticks?

-Correct.

It's kind of how the game a little bit today still goes.

We're allowed to hit each other and it's a lot of fun.

Have you any idea how it passed from

being a Native American, sort of, curiosity

-to being a mainstream sport for white people?

-Yeah.

In the second half of the 19th century,

William George Beers created a set of rules

which is about the same set of rules for years today.

It remains a very physical sport.

What it is you're allowed to do in lacrosse?

Well, in the sport of lacrosse, we're given lots of equipment.

We're given helmets, shoulder pads, elbow pads and gloves

and our sticks, of course, which allow us to hit each other

from the shoulder pads down, waist up.

Anything on the head is malicious

and you get a minute penalty and you have to sit out.

-And you volunteered for the sport?

-Yeah, it's really great.

One of the first weeks of volunteering,

I actually got my nose broken.

-I think I was hooked ever since!

-MICHAEL LAUGHS

It's a curious way to get addicted!

Aside from all the violence, the idea of the sticks is to catch,

carry and throw the ball down the field and into your opponent's goal.

Now, I'm rather reluctant to say this,

because it sounds to me like a pretty brutal and physical sport

but would you mind showing me a few pointers?

Definitely. We'll get you a helmet and pads

and we'll rough you up a bit. Let's get started.

Sounds...great(!)

It seems like...getting right back to Native American times here.

We're going to do battle!

-Let's go.

-Thank you for that!

-Hello, coach.

-How's it going?

-I'm Michael.

-Mike, nice to meet you.

-Now, I've never played this before.

Give me some basics here.

All right. First, let's start with scooping up the ball off the ground.

So the ball is going to be down.

And you're going to come with two hands towards the ground

and you're going to scoop, just like shovelling snow,

and up to your ear.

Right. Hands well down, stick, come in low, a bit of speed and off.

We could turn you into a pro yet!

Catching wrist, just going to slide up.

-So one hand's right at the top, one hand in the middle.

-Gotcha!

-Arms out.

-Yeah.

-And when it comes in,

-you're going to watch it in and then just give it a go.

-OK.

That's all right.

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

Didn't even see it!

-There you go!

-Whoa!

Got it. Perfect.

-Ready for the team?

-That was nice. Ah...not quite yet.

-We do have something I think can handle, though.

-Oh.

-We're going to do a face-off.

-Oh, a face-off. OK. Great, great.

Down!

Get those sticks squared up. Get those sticks squared up. OK.

Set!

Go!

I don't know what I've started here.

Suddenly, the field is populated with screaming people

hurling the ball around.

Quite apart from all the physical violence,

the ball moves at the speed of a bullet,

or I should say, given its size, a small cannonball.

At my school, we played rugby.

I was a wimp and I had a tooth knocked out.

I'm so grateful it wasn't lacrosse!

Oh! MICHAEL CHUCKLES

There we go! Nice hit!

You can see at once how the Native Americans

used this for war training.

It's the most brutal and vicious game,

they're smashing into each other. Kill! Kill!

I'm hungry again!

And there's a place in town that I've heard is not to be missed.

Oh, my goodness.

Now, I know you wouldn't normally do this,

-but would you sit down for a moment?

-Of course!

Because I am from out of town, and I need a bit of explanation.

What have you brought me?

We have a selection of desserts here.

We have a cinnamon roll, we have marshmallow creme,

cinnamon toast crunch - cinnamon sugar, caramel drizzled on that one.

We have the lemon poppy seed,

we have two samples of cheesecakes.

So we have a sample of the chocolate crust with a dirt cup.

-A dirt cup? That sounds inviting(!)

-Dirt cup, yeah!

Dirt would be the Oreos,

and then, of course, we have worms, to go with our dirt.

And then peanut butter M&M - very popular.

OK, Jennifer, thank you. Leave this in my hands.

-All right, it's all up to you.

-Thank you.

Where to begin...

Actually, I quite like the sound of the cinnamon,

so let's give that one a bite.

Yeah! That's quite nice.

And this one...was, I think, lemon drizzle.

Mm, imagine lemon curd on a pizza - that's what you've got. OK.

This one...I don't think I'm going to enjoy.

This is M&Ms on peanut butter. Eurgh!

HE CHUCKLES

That is the weirdest thing.

What a wonderful country. God bless America!

This morning, I am re-joining the Empire Builder service

as it heads deeper into Wisconsin.

I'll alight at Tomah, to see the flooded, fruit-filled marshlands.

From there, I'll continue eastwards to Wisconsin Dells

where I'll explore the railroad connection to the circus,

before I carry on to Portage.

My next stop will be Tomah, Wisconsin.

Appletons' tells me it's at the crossing

of the Wisconsin Valley Railroad in a very fertile valley.

That's probably why the book says that it's a "growing village" -

food for thought!

I'm alighting here to discover how an ingenious 19th-century farming

innovation brought cranberries to the masses.

Today, the state of Wisconsin produces

more cranberries than any other,

about five million 100lb barrels each year -

that's 60% of the United States' entire crop.

There are 180,000 acres of cranberry marsh

and at the centre of it all is the village of Warrens.

The cranberry is, if anything, even more American than apple pie,

since it features as an important component in the Thanksgiving feast.

Warrens, Wisconsin, is the cranberry capital,

and the cranberry harvest is just beginning.

I'm grief-stricken to be missing the Cranfest,

which begins in ten days' time.

I've come to Wetherby Farm to meet one of the original founders of

the Cranberry Festival, Nodji Van Wychen.

-Nodji, hello.

-Hello, Michael.

-Good to see you.

-Good to be here.

Now, you are holding a pair of waders - are they for me?

They certainly are, and we're going to put you to work today

and show you exactly how this whole process is done.

Nodji's grandfather started this cranberry farm

and her family has now been here for over a century.

Where does the cranberry come from?

Well, the cranberry is native to North America.

When the early Native Americans and Dutch settlers and so forth were in

this area, they noticed that the blossom resembled

the head and neck of a sandhill crane

and those birds feast in these low-lying areas,

so they named them "crane-berries" and it was shortened to cranberry,

which we still call it today.

So, here we are, a lot of floating cranberries.

How come, how do they get to this state?

Well, when we raise the water level up in the bed,

we're ready for harvest,

and then we have a mechanical machine called a harrow,

which has tines in the front and the back.

As the machine goes through the bed,

it slips the fruit off the vine

and they immediately float to the surface of the water.

And they do this because, if you cut a cranberry in two,

it has four little air pockets.

And that gives the buoyancy of the fruit

to float to the top of the water.

Wisconsin's cranberry farms

were established by 19th-century settlers.

At first, they picked the berries laboriously by hand,

then, in the 1870s, an area was deliberately flooded

to create the first cranberry marsh.

Your family has been here three generations.

I mean, how do you feel about the business you're in?

Oh, it's my life, it's my way of life, I'm passionate about it,

I grew up here.

My son and son-in-law are active in the business now,

I have eight grandchildren,

and it's grandma's dream that one of those kids

will take over the marsh and be the fifth generation on this marsh.

Well, on this, the first day of the harvest, it's all hands to the pump.

First, floating booms are used to round up the cranberries

before they're pumped into a waiting truck.

Hello. I'm Michael.

I'll... I'll get a few sections down, shall I?

Producing a litre carton of cranberry juice

takes about 1,000 of these berries.

We are moving a vast number of cranberries.

Just vast!

Thank you very much.

Next Thanksgiving,

Americans can give thanks to me

for bringing them their cranberry sauce.

With tremendous force, the pump is sucking out the cranberries,

distributing the fruit to the truck, getting rid of the rubbish,

returning the waste water,

but it's still very useful to have a couple of guys with a rake!

It's an impressive operation

and a major part of Wisconsin's economy.

The Empire Builder service travels from Seattle, Washington,

in the far north-west

all the way across America to Chicago,

a journey of well over 2,000 miles lasting more than 45 hours.

-Excuse me?

-Howdy.

-May I join you a moment?

-Pardon?

-May I join you a moment?

-Sure.

I'm interested. Are you plotting our route on your map?

Just the route that we're taking here

over to New York City,

and, um, I'm just marking off the states I've been to.

Where did you get on this train?

-Olympia, Washington.

-My goodness!

Where are you getting off this train?

We're going to stop in Chicago and have a delay of four hours,

and then we're going to get off in New York City.

And why are you doing that?

Is it for the joy of travelling by train, or why?

I'm travelling with my ex-wife.

We were going to drive this route.

The transmission went bad about in here, right here,

we didn't get too far from home.

So we decided to take the train.

You could have flown this distance in six hours.

The train's going to take you more than three days.

Yeah, the train's a lot more fun.

MICHAEL CHUCKLES

-Yeah.

-That's great.

My next stop will be Wisconsin Dells,

a place long popular with visitors.

In the late 19th century, thanks to newish technology,

prospective tourists could not only read about their destinations,

but they could view their images in black and white.

I've arrived at a city on the Wisconsin River

lined by striking sandstone gorges and canyons,

cut by glacial meltwater thousands of years ago.

These beautiful dells are a natural tourist attraction

made famous by 19th-century photographer H H Bennett.

His studio is still here, managed by David Rambow.

Michael. Great to see you.

David, I get the impression H H Bennett was a big figure in

the history of American photography. Who was he?

He started out as a carpenter's apprentice

and then a carpenter and moved here from Vermont in 1857,

right before the railroads came here.

He took up photography quite early

after his experiences in the Civil War.

His right hand was damaged by a bullet,

so he had to switch trades and do something a little bit easier.

Very well-known for his landscapes,

these were all taken around Wisconsin Dells, were they?

These were all taken within a few miles of here.

What do you think he did for Wisconsin Dells?

He literally put Wisconsin Dells on the map

with railroad travel and with tourism in general.

In 1886, this stunning photograph cemented Bennett's fame.

Before then, the long exposures required by early cameras

had made capturing motion almost impossible.

Well, this was an innovation, this was Bennett at his best.

He, in the late 1880s,

was dabbling with what he called an instantaneous shutter.

He called it a "snapper".

It ran on a rubber band.

This was actually his son

that he induced, somehow, to jump 14 times to get it just right.

When they first showed this in Chicago,

people were astonished, they accused him of fraud,

they wondered where the wires were holding the son.

But he could show them that he could replicate this and it was real.

David has researched H H Bennett's methods

and can show me how he worked.

David, you have brought me to a delightful spot.

Is this the sort of equipment that H H Bennett would have had?

This is the type of camera and apparatus he would have carried

in the 1870s and the early to mid-1880s.

And would he have made these boxes himself?

These were available commercially, but often at times, Bennett,

being a carpenter and a tinkerer,

-liked to build his own to his own specifications.

-Wow.

He would have chosen any spot where you could get a good view

of the rocks and the panorama over the river.

He often, at times, was out on the river as well, on a skiff or a raft,

taking pictures out there as well,

which would have been a little dicey and sometimes dangerous.

Right, we're going to be dealing with chemicals,

which don't agree with yellow jackets.

I'm just going to get rid of that.

So, what do we do?

OK, first, we choose a nice, clean piece of metal.

We have to pour something on it that will connect to the silver

into the metal,

and in my case, we use collodion,

which is a combination of ether, nitrocellulose and grain alcohol.

Sounds like you might knock yourself out with that.

I don't smoke near it - that's for certain.

What you want to do is cover it completely

without spilling too much - this is precious liquid.

That's very satisfying, actually, David.

David disappears into his mobile darkroom to dip the plate

in silver nitrate, which makes it light-sensitive.

Bye for now!

The film now coating the plate will turn black when exposed to light.

A special holder protects it as it's transferred into the camera.

-You have to remove this little baffle...

-Ah-ha!

..and that exposes the film to the front, where the light will come in.

I'm going to remove the lens cap. How long for?

Um, in this light, probably about five seconds.

-Will you count me down?

-Certainly.

Five, four, three,

two, and clear.

The last step is to wash the plate in a solution of potassium cyanide.

What will this ghastly compound achieve?

You'll be starting to see this image turn from what looks like

a negative into a positive.

I'm seeing the trees emerging as dark shapes and now, indeed,

the image is spreading all the way across the plate.

Now, look at that, David.

Really, you have produced a beautiful image

of the trees and the water,

and would not people have been drawn to Wisconsin Dells

by this photograph?

That was the plan that Bennett had.

He saw these put into libraries all over the south

so people would want to be drawn here.

In H H Bennett's day,

Wisconsin Dells was officially called Kilbourn,

named after the president of the railroad,

but local people had always referred to it as

"the Dells," and in 1931,

the name was formally changed.

By the mid-19th century,

holiday-makers who came for the landscape

could also enjoy attractions from water-skiing to theme parks.

And today, the city bills itself

as the water park capital of the world.

MUSIC: Ride of the Valkyries by Richard Wagner

The resort of Wisconsin Dells

has changed a bit since the times of H H Bennett,

but water is still very much the theme

and, hey, you've got to flow with the times.

Whoo!

More revealing of a person's character

than any 19th-century photograph!

Before re-joining the railroad,

I'm making a detour to another important attraction.

A short distance away is Baraboo, a place that,

in the late 19th century, became known as Circus City.

Today, it's home to a quirky museum

with a special draw for the railway enthusiast.

Welcome, welcome to Circus World.

A magical world for me, not only a train shed,

but a train shed full of circus vehicles.

Circus train, for sure,

it's over 600 feet long and it contains a full circus train

on three different sidings.

Former clown and ringmaster, Scott O'Donnell,

is the museum's director.

Scott, I think this is one of the most extraordinary places

I've ever been, and we're walking on flat railway cars.

What were these for?

The flat cars in the circus were for transporting all of the exciting

and spectacular circus wagons from town to town.

These are magnificent wagons that weigh from five to 12 tonnes apiece.

Baraboo was home to the five Ringling brothers.

They opened their first circus on the site in 1884

and started to tour the Midwest.

But within six years, they were using the railroad

to take their acts much further afield.

Paint me a picture of those trains.

Sure, so the train in its entirety is probably a mile long.

It's a combination of flat cars, such as we're walking on,

and it's a combination of Pullman cars,

sleeping cars for the performers to live in as well.

Then there is also some specialised stock cars which took the elephants

or any of the other exotic animals from town to town.

The Ringlings weren't the only circus to use the railroad.

In 1872, their fellow Wisconsinite, P T Barnum,

famous for creating the Greatest Show On Earth,

pioneered the idea of the specially-designed circus train.

Is Wisconsin special in the history of American circus?

It's an important state because it's like a hub to the rest of America.

You could go east or you could go west.

It also had good rail infrastructure,

so that allowed a lot of circuses to be formed here.

When the circus came to town, it was like a national holiday.

Schools were let out,

businesses took the day off because the circus came to town with sights

and sounds and smells that you'd never seen before.

Electricity is an attraction when you're at the circus.

Flying machines, automobiles, recorded sound.

Whether it's animals in a menagerie,

whether it's people with some unique physical features in the sideshow,

you can imagine the awe and excitement that would be found

at a day at the circus.

The Ringling brothers bought Barnum's circus in 1907

and still use the railroad.

Travelling by train is like the United Nations on rails,

you could have a Mongolian contortion act,

next to a Hungarian teeterboard act,

next to a Brazilian tiger trainer,

and that's an amazing world to be a part of, especially on rail.

You get to sit on a vestibule in your train car

and watch America go by.

Part of the magic of the circus is you're standing at the side of the

road, the arms go down for a train coming and holy whoop-de-doodle,

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,

and that's a great experience.

Controversially, in Europe, is the use of animals.

Obviously, they were used in the United States. Are they used still?

Animals are still used in America.

Not in every circus, but on classic or traditional circuses.

We, here at Circus World, have animals

with us during the summertime.

Shall we move along and you can show me some tricks?

Absolutely.

Michael, welcome. Welcome to the centre ring.

We have some fantastic circus wardrobe for you to put on,

although, by the looks of it, you don't need much other

than the nose and the hat, but your choice!

I'm going to go for this jacket, cos it's...it's kind of my style.

-Polka-dots are in, absolutely.

-Good, OK.

Of course, you can't do nothing without one of these.

-Oh!

-Ah, how do I look?

-Ta-dah!

-Very fine.

-Right.

-Shall we teach you some tricks?

Yes. Well, you can try to.

OK. Get yourself a broom and your finger,

put the broom on your finger and work on your balancing skills.

It's best when you're balancing just to look at the top,

so, if it starts to lean one way,

you come underneath and counterbalance with your finger.

-Right. All I can really see is my... is my nose.

-Is your nose...

And you're off.

Nicely done, look at you sweeping up with these skills!

Centre ring, here you come.

My goodness, there's sawdust in your veins, I can tell.

Back, nose!

OK, we're going to spin plates with the skills that you just learned

balancing the broom.

So get yourself a plate, get yourself a stick...

Sit it on the stick and you're going to let it go right around the stick

until it goes right to the centre and spin around, it does.

And...go.

Nice.

I've spent 30 years of my life working on spin!

And the circus performer is born.

Whoa!

Ta-dah!

Very nice.

There's one more stop on this leg of my journey.

A short train ride just 20 minutes east.

-May I join you for a moment?

-Sure.

Hello, guys. I couldn't help noticing you're a very lively group.

THEY LAUGH You are, aren't you? A lively group.

Where are you all headed for?

We're all heading to Milwaukee for an Arts Midwest convention.

-Arts?

-Yes, sir.

-We are...

-Theatre arts.

-Theatre arts?

-Oh, you're all in the theatre business?

-Yes, we are.

And how far are you travelling? Where did you get on the train?

We got on the train in Red Wing.

-And do you like the train?

-We love the train.

-Let somebody else do the driving!

-Yeah.

And what about you, are you a train fan?

-This is my first time.

-Your first time what?

-On...

THEY LAUGH

Sitting next to you.

You don't mean your first time EVER on a train, do you?

-No, but never a long-distance train.

-OK.

-So what do you think of it?

-It's pretty cool.

-I like that we can just have conversations like this.

-Yes!

-And, you know...

-And drink!

-Yeah.

-For a libation...

-LAUGHTER

I think this is a little out of date.

-Yes, but it's an 1880 Appletons' guide.

-OK.

Appletons' were a father and son who wrote guidebooks

-for people who travelled by train.

-Oh, OK!

And it's very revealing of American history.

I mean, for example, this is written

not long after the American Civil War.

-See, I lived in Atlanta, Georgia for 25 years.

-Yeah.

-And there's lots of Civil War battlefields there.

-Yeah.

I'm a big Civil War buff. That's very... That's really cool.

The Empire Builder train, that left Seattle 44 hours ago,

is now approaching Portage city,

which Appletons' tells me is situated at the head of navigation

of the Wisconsin River

and on the canal connecting the Fox and the Wisconsin

at a junction of the Milwaukee and St Paul Railroad.

A portage was a place where you had to carry your boat

between one body of water and another.

Ouch!

TRAIN HORN BLOWS

Ah! Thanks for the ride.

So how long is your route? Where do you go backwards and forwards from?

Between Chicago and Winona, Minnesota.

-How long have you been on the railroad?

-Eight years.

-Yeah, that's quite a long stint.

-Eight years.

So, what do you have to do now as we come into this station?

I have to tell the engineer when to stop,

I have to have him stop at a specific point on the platform.

-OK, I'm going to let you concentrate on that.

-All right.

So you tell him how many car lengths, is that right?

Yeah, how many car lengths until I need him to stop.

Four cars.

Three.

Two.

One.

-Hope to see you on another ride.

-I hope so too.

-Bye-bye, now.

-Take care.

The canal described in my Appletons' was once a vital link

in America's 19th-century system of waterways.

I'm hearing the story from amateur historian Fred Galley.

-Hello, Fred.

-Hello, Michael. Welcome to Portage.

-Thank you so much.

-We're happy to have you here.

And this is the Portage Canal?

Yes, it is. This first section was built in 1876,

but the history of the portage goes back some 10,000 years.

So there was a portage between the Fox River and the Wisconsin River.

How far were people having to carry their boats?

A mile and a quarter, that's about 2,000 metres.

And what sort of land was between the two?

Well, it was a marshy area.

This short section of marsh

was the only obstacle to travelling thousands of miles by water.

The Fox River is linked to the Great Lakes,

and thence to the Atlantic Ocean.

The Wisconsin River joins the mighty Mississippi, which, in turn,

flows all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.

The Native Americans knew about and used this portage.

Who were the first Europeans to do so?

The first Europeans were Marquette and Joliet.

They came in 1673.

They were French explorers, and the Indian translators told them

where the portage was.

In the heyday of the portage, what was it like?

Around 1800, the portage really started to be used

and what it was used for was people travelling west.

So, at its height, about 1,000 people a year would cross

the portage and that continued on until the 1830s, or even 1840s.

There were a number of different entrepreneurs

that started a livery service.

And when you pulled up in your boat in the Fox River,

they would come down and ask you if you wanted help.

And for 5 or 10,

they would take all of your stuff and carry it to the other side

of the Wisconsin River, get you all situated and push you off

and send you downriver.

The waterways were being used increasingly to transport wheat

and manufactured goods.

Local businessmen began to campaign for a canal in 1829,

but it failed due to a lack of funds.

Eventually, in the 1870s,

the Army Corps of Engineers took on and completed the project.

1876 is very late for a canal, because, by then,

-you've got railroads.

-Right.

And that kind of caused a lot of problems.

But what happened was the railroad was a monopoly and they were

charging just extravagant amounts of money to haul these goods.

The entire Fox-Wisconsin water system was built

to make the railroads lower their prices and be accountable, you know,

give them some competition.

Thinking back to the days of the portage,

what do you think it was like for the ordinary person having to lug

their canoe a mile and a half?

Well, I've got one sitting right over here, let's give it a try.

OK!

And how would you set about carrying that?

Well...

So, you grab it like this.

-Then we pick it up and flip it over!

-MICHAEL GROANS

Oh, hang on, Fred. Hang on, hang on, hang on!

I think you and I are a bit old for this, don't you?

-Just a little, yes.

-Look, there's a handle at each end.

There's a handle at each end, let's try that.

Let's try that. OK.

-Hup!

-All right, we're ready to go!

-OK, how far?

-2,700 paces.

2,700.

19, 20, 21, 22...

That's a long way to 2,700.

-Hard work, Fred.

-Yes, might be easier if we put it in the canal.

Now you tell me!

So, up ahead, Michael, is the Wisconsin River lock.

How far are we now from the Wisconsin?

Well, the Wisconsin is just down the other side of this levee,

so not far, like, 100 feet.

Well, Fred, you're right about one thing -

paddling a canoe certainly beats carrying a canoe.

That's correct.

The riverscape of North America would have changed hardly at all

in the thousands of years that Native Americans

hunted and fished this region.

The white settlers converted the Mississippi

into a major artery for commerce

and, later, engineers built this Portage Canal

to connect the North Atlantic to the Gulf of Mexico.

Railroads, farms, cities and highways followed.

The taming and development of the Midwest

offers an extraordinary example of American grit and ingenuity.

Next time, I taste the freedom of the American open road...

-Ready to ride?

-I'm ready to ride.

..strike out in America's national game...

Here we go. You're looking like a natural already.

..I make a few announcements...

258, your train is never late.

258, your train is never late.

..and I'm blown away by the Windy City.

Chicago at sunset.

Surely one the world's most stunning cities.