St Louis to Jefferson City, Missouri Great American Railroad Journeys


St Louis to Jefferson City, Missouri

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Transcript


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

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my reliable Appletons' guide.

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

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

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Beautiful...

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memorable...

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and striking...

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in the United States.

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INDISTINCT SHOUTING

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As I journey across this vast continent,

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

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and how the railroads tied this nation together,

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helping to create the global superstate of today.

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Morning, sir. Ticket, please.

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I'm getting off at Washington, Missouri.

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

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-Thank you very much.

-Thank you.

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I'm continuing my journey west across the United States.

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These tracks were used by European settlers in the 19th century.

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I'll investigate how they imported their way of life

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into the New World, reinvented their traditions,

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and made the lawless penitent.

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My journey began in St Louis, Missouri, the gateway to the West.

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Following the route of the pioneers,

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I'll visit Kansas City and Dodge City.

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I'll encounter a surprising British legacy in Colorado Springs

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before turning south to experience the Hispanic culture of Albuquerque, New Mexico.

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My journey will end in Arizona,

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at the dazzling natural wonder of the Grand Canyon.

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Today I'm heading west,

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starting at the birthplace of a rural icon in Washington, Missouri,

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moving on to the very German Hermann,

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and ending up in the state capital of Missouri, Jefferson City.

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On this journey, I try my hand on a pipe production line...

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We're on a roll now.

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A little bit of finger in that one.

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..discover where the outlaws of the American frontier were brought to justice...

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And what they did is they hauled you all the way back to

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Jefferson City, Missouri.

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

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..and enjoy the many traditions of the Midwest's German settlers.

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Eins, zwei, drei.

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-Zicke, zacke, zicke, zacke.

-ALL:

-Hoi, hoi, hoi!

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My first stop will be Washington, Missouri,

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which Appletons' tells me is a prosperous and handsome town.

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I want to discover how the Europeans encountering an American crop found

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a corny way of fulfilling their pipe dreams.

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

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of the Mississippi, the Pacific Railroad.

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Following the course of the Missouri River,

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it was built to connect early immigrant settlements and to promote

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further colonisation.

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-Thank you very much.

-You're welcome.

-Bye-bye now.

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The railroad arrived in Washington, Missouri,

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in 1855 and helped to make this town the world capital of a very

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particular product.

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I'm visiting the Missouri Meerschaum company to meet Marilyn Lanning.

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-Hello, Marilyn.

-Hello, Michael.

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-Welcome.

-Thank you very much.

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-Wonderful historic building.

-Oh, thank you.

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This is actually the original building that we built in the

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

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In the 19th century, pipe smoking was widespread and in the rural Midwest,

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where there was an abundance of corn,

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farmers whittled pipes from their own crops.

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

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

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

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

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they're separated into size.

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

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that they're making.

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

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in the centre.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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smoking a corncob pipe was a little bit hickish,

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

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aristocratic, perhaps,

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

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-Hi.

-Hello.

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Wow! You do those fast.

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What have you got in the bowl there?

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It's a white plaster.

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

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Right.

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

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-Yes.

-It fills them holes in to make it smooth,

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

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And then sand it again, by the time it comes out here,

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it's slick as glass.

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

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Yeah, plaster will harden up on me.

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

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day for the home market and abroad.

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

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This is the little black feral on the stem.

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

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

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Probably a couple of thousand in an hour...

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-In an hour?

-In an hour.

-Really?

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

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-couple of hours.

-Wow!

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

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-Show me how to do it.

-This...

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

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

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-Two taps.

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

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

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-it levels it out more.

-Well...

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One end is thinner than the other.

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It's narrower, yeah.

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So I pop that over the ring...

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One tap and another tap for luck.

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-Yes.

-That looks good.

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

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

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Two taps and away to a pipe dream.

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Excellent.

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Manufactured just metres from the railroad station,

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

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Pipe connoisseurs Joe and Jim are aficionados of this icon of the Midwest.

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

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It's one that I use quite often.

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

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to be one of our hobbies.

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-Squirrel?

-Squirrel.

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Yes, relative to the rat, yes.

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Tree rats, actually.

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But we consider them a food source here.

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And my wife cooks a fantastic squirrel in gravy

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

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

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

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Keeps your trigger finger warm.

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Who have been famous pipe smokers in American history?

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Well, General MacArthur, I would say.

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He's right up there.

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

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

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

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to smoke it for a couple plus hours without refilling.

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I guess he was a busy man.

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Throughout the 19th century,

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European immigration to the United States gathered pace,

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

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potential of America's new lands.

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

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

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

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certainly achieved that.

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

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began cultivating a crop that reminded them of home.

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

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

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

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the Rhine in Germany. Is there some connection?

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

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it reminded them of home.

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When did the cultivation of vines first start here?

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

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

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but by that timeframe, there were over 60 wineries

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in and around the town of Hermann.

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

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particularly a wine-producing area.

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We tend to think of California.

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How important was Missouri in its heyday?

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

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

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

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

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

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-What about the language?

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

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

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

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to Pershing, in honour of General Pershing.

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

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scrutinising for German sympathisers.

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And that really killed that language out.

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

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-Did that have an impact on wine growing?

-It helped kill it.

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Because they were looked so carefully at by the Feds,

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they didn't attempt to do any sacramental wines,

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which a lot of wineries in California were able to survive

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prohibition by making communion wine or sacramental wine.

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But with the German...

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

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-May we move on to the vineyard?

-Oh, absolutely.

-Thank you.

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The railroads initially boosted the Missouri wine industry,

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transporting its product across America,

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but when the first transcontinental railroad reached California in 1869,

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the West Coast wines offered formidable competition.

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Where does this grape come from?

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The predominant species is Vitus aestivalis,

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which is a Native American grape.

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So very well adapted to this climate.

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-Are you having a good year?

-Oh, it's a great year.

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It's a really warm season, adequate rainfall.

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

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

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The heritage may be of the Rhine Valley,

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but the grape varieties and the resulting wines are very different

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from their European counterparts.

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

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

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

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Not at all. This is our top wine.

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

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

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Very nice.

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-Redcurrant?

-Definitely.

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-Spicy?

-Very spicy.

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Particularly from this vineyard site.

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We get a lot of spicy character.

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-How do we say around here...?

-Prost.

-Prost!

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

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

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sausage shop, run by Mike Sloan.

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

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

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

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

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It's a meal all by itself.

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-Oh, my goodness.

-All the major food groups are represented right there

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-in that sausage.

-That is a very, very good sausage.

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

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We make 46 different flavours of sausage and bratwurst.

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Are you a native of Hermann?

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

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-71 years.

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

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is German today, would call itself German?

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

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

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but I'd still say 80%.

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What are the customs that you maintain?

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Well, we have our May Festival, our Maifest,

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we have the sausage festival, the Wurstfest.

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We have Oktoberfest, October Festival.

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

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A couple of months, yes.

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

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beer and a singsong.

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# Mein Vater war ein Wandersmann

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# Und mir steckt's auch im Blut

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# Drum wandr' ich flott, so lang ich kann

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# Und schwenke meinen Hut... #

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Here we go!

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# Faleri, falera, faleri

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

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# Faleri, falera

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# Und schwenke meinen Hut. #

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Eins, zwei, drei.

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

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-Zicke, zacke, zicke, zacke.

-ALL: Hoi, hoi, hoi!

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

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Amtrak River Runner Route.

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-Guys? May I join you for a second?

-Sure.

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Thank you very much.

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

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-Where are you headed for?

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

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-Do you like using the train?

-Absolutely.

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

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-It's the best way to travel.

-Wow!

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You sound like an advertisement for the railroads.

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Actually, many Americans seem to be railroad averse.

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They just get in their car.

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

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

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

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

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

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-Missouri River so much, aren't you?

-Very scenic, very nice.

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My next stop is Jefferson City,

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

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Beautifully situated on high bluffs which overlook the Missouri River.

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

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Third president of the United States.

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The man who made the Louisiana purchase from Napoleon of France

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

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

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

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Jefferson City, now arriving.

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

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Thank you very much.

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Located on the river between St Louis and Kansas City,

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Jefferson City began as a midway trading post.

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

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

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

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

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dominated by a dome.

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This one in Jefferson City, Missouri, has a sort of grey austere

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elegance about it.

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

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My Appletons' gives the reader detailed descriptions of American

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towns and cities but in the days before guidebooks,

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

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I'm here to meet art historian Joan Stack

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to find out about a famous frontier painter and Missouri

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politician, George Caleb Bingham.

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Why is George Caleb Bingham significant?

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

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paint Native Americans and buffalo,

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he painted the people who worked in the West.

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And when people saw these images in the east,

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

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

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

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and influential in New York.

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

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Tell me about this image.

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This is the picture that made George Caleb Bingham famous.

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And the picture was called The Jolly Flatboatman.

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

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Missouri at that time.

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

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who represent the potential of the United States.

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

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

0:21:420:21:48

that was displayed in New York.

0:21:480:21:49

It appears at first to be this beautiful landscape with this

0:21:490:21:53

beautiful evening sky, but if you look closely,

0:21:530:21:56

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

0:21:560:22:00

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

0:22:000:22:06

And Bingham was a member of the Whig party,

0:22:060:22:09

which supported the idea of improving the rivers,

0:22:090:22:13

of making them more safe to navigate.

0:22:130:22:17

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

0:22:170:22:20

-the West?

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

0:22:200:22:23

advantage of the romanticism around the Native Americans,

0:22:230:22:27

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

0:22:270:22:31

that is the West that is disappearing.

0:22:310:22:35

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

0:22:350:22:39

men, those are the people that are working the rivers,

0:22:390:22:41

making America a united country, uniting the East with the West,

0:22:410:22:47

creating this commercial world, this economic world,

0:22:470:22:51

that had a great deal of potential.

0:22:510:22:52

Remaining in Jefferson City, and led by my guidebook,

0:23:010:23:05

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

0:23:050:23:11

Jefferson City's State penitentiary, says Appletons',

0:23:130:23:17

is massive and spacious.

0:23:170:23:19

Evidently, so it is.

0:23:190:23:21

I'm just asking myself why such a small town would need such a huge jail.

0:23:210:23:27

This intimidating structure was opened in 1836 and was operational

0:23:340:23:41

for 168 years, until it closed in 2004.

0:23:410:23:44

I'm meeting Mike Gruce, a former warden.

0:23:460:23:49

Mike, the interior of the prison confirms its size.

0:23:520:23:56

Why so big in Jefferson City?

0:23:560:23:59

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

0:23:590:24:02

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

0:24:020:24:05

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

0:24:050:24:09

We were the furthest west prison in the United States for a

0:24:090:24:12

number of years. Those people going west, they're concerned about not

0:24:120:24:15

being killed by an Indian or eaten by a bear.

0:24:150:24:18

Not building a prison.

0:24:180:24:20

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

0:24:200:24:23

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

0:24:230:24:26

or something, what did they do with you?

0:24:260:24:28

There were no prisons.

0:24:280:24:30

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

0:24:300:24:34

That's what caused us to have a population of over 5,000 people

0:24:340:24:38

here at this prison.

0:24:380:24:39

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

0:24:410:24:45

Wild West and serious and violent criminals from beyond the frontier

0:24:450:24:50

were brought here by local sheriffs or bounty hunters.

0:24:500:24:55

Must have been pretty crowded.

0:24:590:25:00

It was certainly crowded and with six people per cell,

0:25:000:25:03

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

0:25:030:25:06

there was no electricity, there was no heat.

0:25:060:25:08

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

0:25:080:25:11

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

0:25:110:25:16

What was the daily routine of the prisoner?

0:25:160:25:19

The primary job was building the prison.

0:25:190:25:21

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

0:25:210:25:25

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

0:25:250:25:28

inmate and hand shaped.

0:25:280:25:30

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

0:25:300:25:35

The regime was harsh - silence at all times, solitary confinement during

0:25:350:25:40

the evening, and hard labour during the day.

0:25:400:25:44

The large, cheap workforce was readily exploited by local businesses.

0:25:440:25:49

They were put to work manufacturing things that were needed by the

0:25:550:25:59

people in Missouri and the people settling in the West.

0:25:590:26:02

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

0:26:020:26:07

wagons west, in Westward expansion.

0:26:070:26:09

We found the records for saddle trees,

0:26:090:26:11

which is the piece under a Western saddle.

0:26:110:26:13

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

0:26:130:26:16

So a significant portion of what the settlers in the early West needed

0:26:160:26:20

were made here at this prison.

0:26:200:26:22

How were the raw materials imported into the prison?

0:26:220:26:24

How was the product exported?

0:26:240:26:27

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

0:26:270:26:30

horses or mules. But that wasn't sufficient.

0:26:300:26:32

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

0:26:320:26:35

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

0:26:350:26:39

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

0:26:390:26:42

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

0:26:420:26:46

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

0:26:540:27:00

West, carving out routes for trade and new settlement.

0:27:000:27:03

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

0:27:040:27:09

they had to adapt and work hard.

0:27:090:27:12

German settlers were attracted to Missouri because it reminded them of

0:27:150:27:20

the Rhine and today there is still a German community enjoying sausages.

0:27:200:27:26

But the wine they produce is not German.

0:27:260:27:29

It's made from an indigenous American grape, and that could be a metaphor -

0:27:290:27:34

no matter how much those of European origin value their traditions,

0:27:340:27:40

they've been thoroughly absorbed into the American mosaic.

0:27:400:27:44

Next time, I'll discover the hidden pleasures of 19th-century railroad workers...

0:27:460:27:51

One of the St Louis newspapers referred to the city

0:27:510:27:54

as the Sodom and Gomorrah of the Midwest.

0:27:540:27:58

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

0:27:580:28:02

400,000 people made that journey.

0:28:020:28:06

They claim at least 9% died along the way.

0:28:060:28:09

..and find out with freight on the rails it's all about size.

0:28:090:28:13

So let's say the average length of a car is 20 yards,

0:28:130:28:16

you've got 100 cars, that is more than a mile.

0:28:160:28:19

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