he ranked barkley is one of the greatest legislators of all times. so i would leave you all to consider the towering legacy of alben barkley. an unquestioned giant in the history of the senate, in the history of kentucky, and in the history of paducah. thank you very much. [applause] >> american artifacts on american history tv. visit to the our national security archives at george washington university reveals documents about the gulf of tonkin in vietnam. a resolution gave president johnson broad powers to wage war

in southeast asia. sunday at 6:00 and 10:00 p.m. eastern. while congress is in recess, american history tv will be in prime time monday through friday at 8:00 p.m. eastern, featuring events from watergate. >> all weekend on american history tv, we are featuring historic sites and local historians from cities across america. these are highlights from c-span's 2014 city to her. stop atdeo from all our c-span.org/localcontent. >> photographer lauren irving retraced john freeman -- trip to photograph

oregon campus. >> what makes this different from doing historical research is that sometimes the writing in the journal is so precise and well-described that i can find characteristics of location studies right in the journal. so i end up trying to capture that on film. i am trying to incorporate things in the images that are described in the journal. in late may of 1843, the expedition left westport, which is near kansas city now. and went along what is now the oregon trail. his job was to map the oregon trail in order to make it appear and be feasible for others to go on the oregon trail and come up into the oregon territory and settle in this part of the

country, the northwest. john fremont was a young man that grew up in south carolina. he went to school at charleston college. he also married the daughter of a very powerful senator, thomas hart benton. it is that connection -- benton helped his son-in-law get this job on these expeditions. when he came through here, december of 1843, he was 33 years old. a pretty young man to lead a sizable expedition. so he had a lot of responsibility. the expedition consisted of 104 horses and mules, cattle that they brought along, 25 men, including kit carson and thomas

fitzpatrick and charles preuss, who was a photographer. -- the cartographer. the purpose was to populate -- the purpose of providing the detail it takes to get out here on a wagon was to populate oregon and washington so that the population would be such that we would not have a military conflict with the british. they were pretty well encamped here with the hudson bay company. there were designs by the british to have this territory. but congress was very interested in claiming this part of the northwest. in november of 1843, after he had done his mission here, accomplished his work, he was sitting and made the decision not to stay there for the winter, but to move south.

they started out and came south they went through indianhead canyon camp. down to the junction camp, sligh creek, and then where we are after being at the turnout camp, where we are right now, near bend. after passing for several miles over plains, the trail and are doing beautiful pine forest, which we traveled for several hours. at about 4:00, descended into the valley of another large ranch, on the bottom of which were spaces of open clients -- open pines, with occasional

meadows of good grass. very swift and deep and about 40 feet wide, about half frozen over. among the timber, we had the rare sight of a lunar rainbow. john fremont came across this site december 4, 1843. after coming in from the north, in this little canyon, a couple creeks hind us. -- behind us. the expedition camped here for one night. they had some cattle they were bringing on. they had 104 horses and mules. by this time, they were using a teepee. if you had come -- and there were 25 men as well, plus two american indian guides. if you had come through here on that day in the afternoon at least you would have seen them

, putting up the teepee, several fires getting started, all of the horses and the material that they use for surveys out of the pack. fremont was busy writing in his journal and getting his equipment out to hopefully have the weather be such that he could get a latitude and longitude reading at night. when he was successful at reading the latitude, he was using a telescope and timing a particular moon going around jupiter. they had to have some good optical equipment to do that. charles preuss was very likely on his horse and out where he could see from down in this little canyon. and drawing any sketches of the map from what he could see. the expedition, as far as i could read in the journal, would

start each day moving out of where they were encamped at about 10:00. maybe even 11:00. it took them a long time. during that time, fitzpatrick and carson, very likely that they were out in front to find a good route, if not already on a trail of some kind. when they arrived and saw the trees for the first time, it was on the day of december 5, 1843. they had been a few miles away from it but they had not seen it yet. when they saw it, there was a huge amount of lava activity geologically and a lot of falls and rapids where we are going right now. we are going to a place called

dillon falls. this is right by ryan ranch. we will get a chance to see that here. today, the country was all pine forest. beautiful weather made our journey delightful. it was too warm at noon for winter clothes. the snow, which lay everywhere in patches through the forest, was melting rapidly. after a few hours, we came upon a fine stream in the middle of the forest, which proved to be the principal branch of fall river. it was occasionally 200 feet wide and sometimes narrowed to 50 feet. the waters very clear and frequently deep. we ascended along the river, which sometimes presented sheets of foaming cascades, its banks blocked with a score he --with score he dated scoriated rocks, and found a good contentment on the verge of the bottom. in all our journeying, the rivers were so abounding in falls. the name of this stream is

similarly characteristic. every place we have come in the river, we have heard the roaring of the falls. this is the place, the first initial falls right here. let's just walk down where we can get a good idea of what is going on. he talks about, in his journal, basalt, and as you look at this, you can see what he is talking about, particularly down below. you can see what he is talking about. let's just get down here close and see how it feels to you.

so i do not really think that it has changed since he was here. there is not much erosion. this is the first big picture of dylan falls. i think it is cool that he writes about it in his journal and we can sit here and be at a place where fremont was. 177 years ago. in his journal, he called it the fall river. it is one of the very few rivers in the united states that flows from the south to the north. but it does that. the other thing this is the same , river that flows through bend and makes mirror pond. end. we are known for in b

the cartographer, charles preuss, also talks about the number of falls along the area that they are in. we are at the upper end of dillon falls. they camped right at the upper end of this. just about 300 yards around, there is a nice, big meadow that is now called ryan ranch. it is in this clearing that it fremont expedition camped the night of december 5. at some point, john fremont discovered a hole in the rock. in this meadow, where the water was draining. at the time, he said it was a small stream. it was draining down into the lava rocks below. he made a notation of that in his journal.

he called it -- i think it was the wrong spelling. a french word. he made a comment, not long ago, that the hole was still here. this is also where john fremont made a comment in his journal that they located, happened to see a set of refreshingly-peeled -- freshly peeled poles for teepees. we found a set leaning against the trees. very white and cleanly scraped. had the owners been here, we would have purchased them. because they were not, we left the old ones in their place with a small quantity of tobacco. it crossed my mind how long it would take to peel the bark off of poles. for the american indians who were here who had prepared those, they came back and found

some old ones. he did not make any friends with that particular exchange. then they went south and down to upper climate marsh. then he turned east to a place that he named winter ridge and summer lake. there is a lake here called summerlike. then he went in a circuitous route through water valley and through into nevada. made theis trip was , information was published in a report and some 10,000 copies were made. almost every wagon train that came out from back here in missouri to oregon in 1845 and towards california country have this chart with them and this map.

c-span's localre content vehicles are going next online. you are watching american history tv every weekend on c-span3. the author is our guest this week. >> she was so beautiful and smart and so witty. she was always irresistible to men. i gave her 80th birthday party. richard cohen was at this party. they sat together after dinner having coffee. at one point, she began to stroke his beard. i have never said met an 80 euro before i so wanted to leap into bed with. she has a