Original ceremony was held on may 10, 1869. Included on this ties a list of the dignitaries from that company, including leland stanford, and the big four are all marked there. Another thing you can see on this site is a connection with the resources that would have the twoilable to companies building the railroad. We have mocked up everything to make it as authentic as possible. If you look on the west side, you will see the cut ties. The Central Pacific had they cut all of their ties and brought them down from the mountain. The Union Pacific from the east had to hand cut their ties wherever they could find wood. Not a lot available in the area so they would split them and you can see them mocked up, how they would cut them and bring them out when they could. The Transcontinental Railroad was happening at the end of the victorian age as you are going into the industrial age. It was a perfect time for the United States. When that Transcontinental Railroad was complete, it made a major impact in the Industrial Development of this nation. It was over 6. 5 years. From 18621869. They started building the Transcontinental Railroad went a lot of people were coming out after the gold rush and the silver rush was taking off. We were in the middle of the civil war. Abraham lincoln really wanted to have access to all the materials in the sierra nevadas, including the gold and silver and connect the states in the United States. He chose that time to complete the act and Start Building the railroad. In the middle of the war, the defense of the country was a major factor that was making the decision and they wanted to get troops across the country in a quicker span of time. There were finished goods that would go to states in the west. 46 month around niall horan. Four to six months around the horn. It was hopefully going to be cut and that was lincolns school. He wanted to get troops across the country. And it ended up being 710 days. The companies that built the Transcontinental Railroad where the Central Pacific, starting in sacramento, and the Union Pacific, starting in omaha. There were already extensive rail systems in the east. One of the problems the whole ies were the Company Building before they got paid and almost always in debt and worried about money. The other problem was resources. A huge problem with resources. If you have ever traveled around wyoming and nebraska, there is not a lot of wood. Wood and ties had to be on. You had towers for the infrastructures operating across the country. Because of the civil war they were in, finding manpower was hard. At the end of the civil war, it was a huge help for the railroad company. You had veterans looking for a way to provide for their livelihood and there was a ready employer in the railroad company. For the Central Pacific, this is a bigger concern. A lot of times early on, a lot of workers would come on long enough to get money to mine. That is why the chinese were brought on, as in experiment. They brought in 50 Chinese Workers to test them out. There was a lot of doubt because of their stature. They did not think they could withstand the 12 hour days six days a week. There was a lot of criticism and racism against the chinese. They overcame the doubt and did a fantastic job. Over 11,000 chinese were employed by the end of the Transcontinental Railroad. As the companies approached each other, they were being paid land grants and did not want to give up ground. Instead of coming together and giving up, they continued to build past one another until the federal government said that they were not going to pay them anymore until they figured out where they were going to meet. That is when they selected this spot and they had 30 miles of track to finish in the last month. You are looking down over some of the wetlands of the Great Salt Lake and major factors influence the routes. One involved a fresh waters to refill the tanks on the steam locomotives and they needed to stay under a two percent grade, 100 feet every mile. One of the challenges they faced was a large saltwater lake. They had to find a path around it. They were thinking about going through the wetlands. The engineer brought up a rise in lake level. They decide to go north of the lake, even though it presents more challenges with the grade. You can see, from the side, that if you look down below us, you can see the grade. I mentioned the companies building across the country and passed each other through utah with grade work because they did not want to give up federal money. Down here is the old Union Pacific grade. They sold their rights to the Central Pacific company. The Central Pacific had worked her utah a lot longer and had a much Higher Quality grade. They bought the rights from the Union Pacific and switched over to this grade and that is where we are standing. We are coming up to the last cut made by the Union Pacific in the approach to Promontory Summit valley that is right here. In just a minute, we will look down and you can actually see, in order to get through different elevation changes, they would cut through the rock and blast with black powder. The work you are actually seeing, these burns or hills on the far side of the cut is from the 1860s and it is rock that is stacked up and they put rocks to act as a retaining wall to keep it from collapsing into the cut. It is pretty neat. You can see work that lasted 150 years. [bell] as they approach the actual ceremony, they figured out the spot here at Promontory Summit. A lot of people were interested in knowing when they would complete and it had a lot of reporters from all over the country i came out with dignitaries from the two companies. A lot of individuals would connect to the mainline and benefit with their businesses from that. The day that was set for the completion, when the federal government made these Companies Set when and where they would finished was may 8. We hold the anniversary on may 10 because of the delay of the Union Pacific getting out here and they were not able to hold the ceremony until that day. When they held the ceremony, one of the neat stories is a ceremonial spike. They had four. Including two solid gold, a solid silver, and the arizona spike. They could not drive the spike. They would predrill holes. We often get asked where the gold spike was. We do not know which position the gold spike would have held. The dignitaries would place them in and cap them as part of the ceremony. They removed all that. There was a last spike that was driven. It was a regular iron spike that was linked to the telegraph. They put the telegraph wires around the spike in the hammer. When they drove it in, it sent a live broadcast across the nation. And actually started celebrations throughout the nation. During the ceremony, one of the famous pictures that you see is the champagne photo. There were two locomotives on site and they are known as the jupiter and they Union Pacific number 119. They are two of the most famous in american railroading. It is a cool way to commemorate that. After the ceremony, a lot of pictures were taken and the operation of the railroad became huge throughout the country because they were trying to increase the time and efficiency within these companies. The line passing through this area was bypassed and they built a trestle bridge and causeway across the Great Salt Lake. It went straight across the point of the promontory mountain behind us and in. That cuts extra time and travel. Ogden became a huge have for transporting troops and materials and supplies all across the country. It would have trains every hour unloading huge amounts of supplies of people and it became a major city, a major thoroughfare for moving across the country. Announcer president Woodrow Wilson signed legislation creating the National Park service on august 25, 1916. American history tv is featuring National ParkService Sites across country. We continue now with another stop on the cspan cities tour. A lot of times i ask myself why it is important to have an historic structure. A lot of times, you could read about the history. You read about the history where you are thinking this event happened right where im standing. So that is the value, that you can get the moment of connection between people who are Walking Around today and thinking of their own thoughts and lives and suddenly they can jump back into the past mentally and at least have some sort of a connection with people from the past. Were in st. Louiss old courthouse. It is a building that is no longer used for the courts today. It hasnt been since 1930 but it is an Historic Building that has been preserved to tell a little about st. Louiss history. This courthouse is known for dred scott sued for his freedom. That freedom suit launched in 1846 went to the u. S. Supreme court, which in 1857 decided that they would be held as slaves and continue to be slaves. It was a decision that was very broad. It said that people couldnt be restricted from taking their lives into federal territories any longer so it opened up the western territories to the possibility of slavery. It was one of the main deciding factors in leading the nation on a path toward civil war. There were a lot of other things that happened, the kansas nebraska act. All kinds of things going on at the same time, roughly in the late 1850s. Any one of those, you could say, well, it is one of the place where is the civil war really began, where the roots of the civil war are. Long before the first gun was fired at fort sumpter in South Carolina, theres were many things leading the country on the road to civil war and one of the was the case heard in this building the case of dread and Harriet Scott. It is told on this large level as someone sues and it is a deciding factor of the civil war. The people themselves get lost in the story. Dred scott was a st. Louisian. He came here and lived here. He was born probably in the late 1790s, early 1800s and he was born on a plantation by a family named blow. They moved and they took dred scott with him and tried to make it a go on another plantation and failed there. They moved to st. Louis and bought a hotel and tried to do a different type of work to make their living. They found that they needed ready cash so they sold dred scott after they arrived here in st. Louis in the 1830s. Dred was purchased by a doctor emerson who was a physician working with the u. S. Army. Dr. Emerson was posted in many different places but two of them are the things that resulted in the suit of the scotts later on. One was fort armstrong, which is in the state of illinois, which was not supposed to have slavery because of the northwest ordinance. Another was the territory of wisconsin, today minnesota. So dred scott was taken to these places, held as a slave there, even though slavery was illegal in those places and brought back to st. Louis. While he was at fort snelling, he met a woman named Harriet Robinson who was enslaved to another officer at the fort. Dr. Emerson purchased her and allowed the scotts to marry, legally, which is unusual at the time. Dred and Harriet Scott return to st. Louis, they had two children, both daughters. After a time, dr. Emerson passed away. Mrs. Emerson was asked by the scotts whether they might be able to purchase their freedom from her. It was something, especially in urban slavery that wasnt that unusual. She refused. She was not interested in selling the scott family. So they decided based on the fact that they were still being held as slaves and held in bondage to sue for their freedom. They entered this courthouse in 1846. It one had their own petition. It wasnt just dred, it was dred and harriet. The case came to trial here in this building in 1847. There was hearsay evidence introduced. It was a mistrial. They lost the first trial and they asked for another trial, which the judge granted. They were able to present the evidence successfully and the jury of all white male, 12 white males, probably some of them slave owners decided that dred and Harriet Scott should be free. The verdict that was rendered was to give them their freedom. Mrs. Emerson didnt agree and she appealed the decision to the state Supreme Court, which became publicized by 1852 when which became very politicized by 1852 when they rendered their verdict. The slavery issue was heating up all over the nation. So the justices that were on the state Supreme Court, two were slave owners and they believed the trend was to free slaves that were taken to free territory. They thought it was wrong. Slaves were property and to take a persons property away because a person had taken it to a certain area of the country was not affair thing to do under the law. So they changed from the bench, the legislatured up to what the legal system was saying at that time in missouri, they were saying that the scotts would be returned to slavery. A new attorney named roswell fields and he talks to the scotts about a different strategy. He felt they could take their case to the Federal District court here in st. Louis. Mrs. Emerson remared and she transferred ownership of the scotts from herself to her brother. Sanford was a resident of new york state at this time. The scotts were being held in bondage, technically by a man who lives in another state, a free state to boot. So he thought the strategy would be so the scotts could sue sanford for their freedom. They lost but they appealed that case to the u. S. Supreme court and that was the case that was heard by the Supreme Court in 1856 and again in 1857 when they actually rendered their decision. It is interesting that sanford, his name is on the case and he doesnt come into it until 1854 when they go to the federal courts. Sanford is also a key player in where we know the scotts were returned by the Supreme Court but they were set free in this room a couple months later. The way that happened was sanford died in new york state and upon his death the ownership reverted to his sister and to her husband. He was an abolitionist and he was a sitting member of congress at this time. Suddenly, he finds hes the owner of the most famous slaves in the United States just literally overnight. He wanted to divest himself of these slaves as quickly as he could before the press found out. He sold the scott family for a token dollar to taylor blow, one of the sunday of the original family from the plantation where scott was born back in virginia. Taylor blow brought them into this courtroom and set them free in 1857. So the scotts achieved the freedom that they had fought so long to obtain while still provoking this incredibly important Supreme Court decision that led the country to the civil war, which eventually freed all of the slaves. Dred did not live long after the decision was rendered. He died probably of tuberculosis a year after the case was decided. His wife lived until 1856 so she would have seen the civil war and freedom come along. A good share of their lives, the scotts lived here in st. Louis. They died here. They are buried here. In many respects, we can say the scott family was st. Louisians. Their case started here and in many ways ended here, not with the decision in washington but with being set free. To mark the centennial of the National Park service, American History tv is natural and Historic Sites across the country is recorded by cspans cities tour staff. We continue now with our look at the history of the National Parks. I think it ranks right up with Washingtons Mount Vernon or Jeffersons Monticello in terms of impressiveness. It speaks of a man of significant wealth. Jackson is still considered to be one of our wealthiest president s. It is an 8000 square foot house. If you are coming here, you would have been very impressed by ehouse of this magnitude. And rachel bought this property in 1804. Originally, it was about 425 acres in size. Buildings on the property. For the next 41 years of land tos life, he added the property. He bought and sold property all around the edges. Ine of the time he died 1845, the plantation was about a thousand 50 acres. Jackson understood clearly that part of your power derived from the stage you are on. Grandey were building a stage set for him and for the family. The front of the house is very grand. Called greek revival, which was the height of the United States in the 1830s. It was the growing democracy of the country. Greek fauceto the phase. It was shaped like a guitar, very appropriate for national. The front of the mansion, you see a twostory portico that gallery. Ss the 1835 stateoftheart for and just a very imposing house that became the model for many other plantation houses. Nuclearan building the us of this building in 1819. Nuculus of this building in 18