in addition, you can find appearances by supreme court justices or watch justices in their own words come including one-on-one interviews in the past few months. there is also a calendar for this term, a list of current justices with links to see all their appearances on c-span, as well as many other supreme court videos available on demand. follow the supreme court on c-span.org. each week, american history tv's real america brings you archival films that provide context for today's public affairs issues. north dakota has been in the news recently as members of the standing rock tribe and their sympathizers have been protesting the dakota access oil pipeline, which would crossed the tribe's ancestral lands and environmentally sensitive areas. next, we travel back to the early 1950's when oil was first discovered in north dakota

american frontier is it 28 minutes home funded by the american petroleum institute to promote the financial benefits for farmers for leasing land for oil exploration. ♪

narrator: the wind blows west from the great lakes. the wind sings like a wild bird across the northern states, coming at last to this place. miles of prairie of across montana and dakota. they call it the williston basin. ♪ narrator: not so long ago, this was frontier. listen closely and you will hear the old echo of covered wagons, the phantom shadows of pioneers fighting for their lives against the will miss. -- the wilderness. ♪

narrator: they began with nothing, with their bare hands in a bucket of hope, breaking the land with freedoms plow, like fargo,ns stampede, bluegrass, beaver lodge, lincoln valley, williston. ♪ >> wheat farmer and schoolteacher, i was born and raised here east of montana along the canadian line, williams county, north dakota. if i were somewhere at the into the earth and thinking of home, the thing i would remember would be winter, the and norma's the snowlence, an

cutting us off for the world, the wind slicing across the field. it's so cold that the shadows freeze to the ground and have to be pried loose with a pickax. ♪ barking] ♪ might seem like a desolate clays to some, but we are mostly norwegian up this way. we have an old immigrant prayer that goes, should all things perish, fleeting as a shooting not the ties, let that bind me to the north break. ♪

hymn]hioners singing ♪ morning onday -- ringin] ani have erred to put in hour of chores by the time i turn up to the school. in an hourlready put of chores by the time i turn up to the school. i look at these kids with their restless faces, grandchildren of the pioneers, descendents of the long rifle and the plow.

i find myself wondering, that proud, searching spirit that drove men out a long trails, is it still alive in them? in me? i wonder if this familiar toetch of land, if it would become frontier again, how would we meet the test? it may not be long before we know. there is a tense feeling in the air, essence of waiting, as though some great door is about to swing open. ♪ >> i remember how it all began, so quietly. a few solitary men climbing the hills, crossing the fields, a geologist searching for clues in the shape of a valley, the composition of a stone, the fossil of a leaf that was green at the time of the dinosaurs.

and then, the seismograph crew coming in to map the underground , drill a hole and drop a dynamite charge, the shockwaves going down to hit the buried layers of stone and bounce back to be recorded on sensitive instruments. ♪ by then, we all knew what they were doing, the object of their search was oil. it is hard to imagine that somewhere 1000 miles across the continent, men were adding years of scientific research, checking reports, approaching the decision that might open a new world on our doorstep. >> from all of our available data, i say this is it. here in the southwest

of six, 15595, there is a fair chance of striking oil and a number of reservoir rocks. >> i remember the day last winter, saturday morning, it was. i was working with my pa. gent a tough, stubborn old , been out here and decoder since the days there was nothing but log cabins and a railroad depot. ♪ friend of ours came by, a local lawyer, oscar no. he had a fellow with him, a stranger by the name of roland, a man from the citadel oil company. i remember we invited him inside

for some of my wife barbara's good coffee and the usual talk about the weather and wheat crops. >> the reason i am here is we would like to least the mineral rights on your land. we are offering $.10 and a career tour on a ten-year least. >> wheat is good enough for me. >> most of our operation is underground. the fields are still yours. you can go right on farming. >> if you hit oil? >> you get the standard royalty, 1/8 of a barrel. every four or five years, another company comes around and buys up a bunch of leases. dozenmust be about half a dry holes out there on the prairie. >> we are willing to take our chances. how about it? >> we will think it over. >> do that. we want you to feel right about it. i will be back in a week or so.

>> i'll take every drop of oil you can find in north dakota. >> no sooner did the first visitor takeoff than the next one came rolling in, another land man from burns petroleum. ♪ i remember that within a week we had half a dozen offers. we took our time deciding. we work hard for what we have got. it took the sweat of generations to turn the prairie into wheatland, and then came the 1930's. i was only a kid, but i will remember the dead look of the land burned dry by the drought. when the week went, everything went. the debts piled up until the was nothing a man could do but slammed the door and walk away. hung on.y pa

he had a motto, stick and stay, it is bound to pay. and it did, finally. a few seasons of rain, and the earth was rich again, fields golden with grain, we'd like a running river, so now when the oil companies came, we took our times making up our minds. a man with a couple of full silo's and 50 head of cattle can afford to take his time. finally, we signed with citadel. that was last year it since then, not a word out of them. maybe they found out there isn't any oil. maybe pa was right. ♪ >> neil, they started drilling. >> is that right? >> come on, i want to go see.

>> all right, let's go take a look. ♪ out in bronson's north 40, they were putting up a giant 10 .tory derek they called a rig ♪ >> the geologist showed us around, and it was like watching a little town take shape. welders and roster bouts working in the stinging cold, putting up the drilling platform, pit,ing the mud stringing power lines, working with icy feet and numb fingers. ♪

we can get out of the wind in here. >> i guess once you start to drill, you're sure finding oil down there. >> we are not sure of anything. in this business, it is always maybe. only about one out of nine of those wildcats comes in. >> how much does it cost to drill a well like that? >> it depends. the first hole, drilling in this weather, as deep as we will have to go, probably cost about $500,000. that is the oil business, a real gamble, one out of nine with half a million writing on the black. >> pretty tough odds. >> plenty of men willing to take it, especially when there's a chance of making a profit. indian arrowhead? >> yeah, found it right over

there where we put the rig. that is for luck. we will need it. ♪ in the evenings after that, i watched barbara. i could see she had visions of an oil well out in our wheat field. new wallpaper in the parlor, and a college fund for the kids we hope to have some day. and pa? he keeps saying they are crazy, but he is dreaming too, 10 more head of cattle, a new barn. and me? i don't know. i am not sure. what sort of changes will it bring? in town, you hear people talk about oil. ♪

>> the farmers around the county , the closest most of them to oil has been putting a couple of courts and a tractor, and suddenly they become experts, talking about jackknifed rigs and rotary drills. of course there are plenty who still say, i will stick with wheat. my pa that if we get oil, let's get a car. >> what did he say? >> we will be lucky if we get a wheelbarrow. >> afternoons when i get home from school before i start my chores, i find myself going out to the rig to stand with joe guthrie, watching the crude. , taxes, bunch of boys roughnecks from oklahoma and arkansas. bit, pullem change a

out a pipe, clamp on the big tongs, a man on the cat head spins her in reverse, uncoupling the 90 foot of drill joint, then the block wasted to the derek derrick man. then the block shooting down again to grab the next joint, split-second timing, slam on the tongs, yankp on the out the safety slips, the barkersand the tongs working together with the swift precision of an all-american backfield. rugged, proud, independent brief, always ready to pull up stakes and head out to where ever oil is to be found, california, montana, gulf of mexico, or right in our own backyard.

♪ >> nights back in town, a group of us began getting together, store owners, doctors, lawyers. >> all right, maybe it will all come to nothing to do maybe it is a false alarm. all i am saying is it is important we plan a little, just in case. >> plan for what? >> housing, often space. we are liable to have 50 companies. >> we are overcrowded at the hospital as it is. >> if they strike oil, it will

be the biggest thing that ever hit this state. it will be the front tier all over again, new folks coming in. >> children, who knows how many? do we have room in our schools? what is this oil? what happens when they find it? a wild scramble, boom and bust, what happens? i don't know. i'm just asking. i want to know. >> mr. mayor, i move we set up -- >> we've formed a citizens trying committee to work with the oil companies and get the facts, to make a survey of the town and find out what's facilities we had. ♪ meanwhile, citadel was learning the hard way about a north dakota winter, the deadly cold, 30 below, and the wind like a fist in your face. most of the crew was from the

south, and to them, the cold was beyond belief. ♪ >> the supply trucks were having trouble getting through, fighting a battle to move along the highways. when a man left home for the rig, they would radio ahead to make sure he was not marooned somewhere. a dozen times cars were stranded and they had to send out searching parties. ♪ the company was taking every precaution it could, but it was a brutal, backbreaking drop struggling against the ice 24 hours around the clock. ♪ >> sometimes the bitter weather

got more than a man was willing to take. where are you going? >> to get my fur hat. >> where is it at? >> in oklahoma. ♪ >> yet somehow the drilling went bit kept gnawing away at the aren-hard earth. -- iron-hard earth. >> what you think of those indians, those first homesteaders, a fortune right under their feet? >> how could they have known? if they had known, what could they have done about it? >> you are right. it takes tools and skill, the freedom to explore, invent,

discover. rush, allof the gold those people racing for the hills, some of them passing right over a treasure a thousand times more rich maybe. >> may be. ♪ >> it seems as though everywhere you go, people are passing along reports of the latest depths. i hear she's down to 5000 feet. 8255.o and then the day came when they got down past 11,000 and the drilling stopped, the end of the line. ♪ >> the word spread that if there was in the oil, this would be the last depth where they could hit it. from my house, people came to watch, just a thin pipe sticking out of the ground over an empty pit, and everyone waiting.

this is that the off, or is it? ♪ >> a few moments, and they will be throwing open the valve. ♪ >> we stand fair, our eyes glued to that type. its it just keeps spilling thin stream of muddy water or will it go forth the white foam that means oil? waiting, waiting, each of us with his hopes, his secret dreams. ♪

>> by golly, this is oil. they flashed of the world from the field to the production office in williston, and from there to the central office in oklahoma. day and night, our little telephone board was lit up like a christmas tree, calls from new york, california, houston, bit by bit, we began to relies how big of a thing this was, a river of cars came pouring in from every corner of the country. and hotels jammed with a stream of new covers, reflecting all the marvelous, varied, cross weave of america.

every day bringing a new flood of cars, every train bringing new faces, a construction engineer coming in on a fast express from cheyenne, a pipe salesman flying up from tulsa. bringing in everything from six inch bolts to storage tanks, riveting guns to road graders, brick builders and drilling contractors rolling in, ready for work. a hundred oil companies racing to get a foot in the doorway, competing for leases, drilling wells across 10,000 square miles of north dakota and montana. ♪ >> landmen and lawyers waiting their turn to pour over the county records, all the planning by the citizens committee finally paid off. we were ready with lists of office space, new housing under

way, extra books for the new kids at school, a thousand questions were in the air. the oil companies tried to answer them by picking a panel of experts and sending them out across the basin to a series of town meetings. >> perhaps you are not familiar with the fact that petroleum is a source of insecticides, rust preventatives, plastics, alcohol, and a thousand other products. however, it is not possible to give you all the uses of crude oil at this time. perhaps some of you have some questions? >> do any of you folks have any questions? >> i was just wondering, how long is all this going to last? mindsuess what is on your is the old story of boom and bust. i assure you that we will be in the williston basin for a good many years looking for oil.

the exploration process is only in its infancy. the old ideas was punch as many holes as possible, get the oil, and get it quick. the oil companies live and learn. all over the country, we are learning how to produce our fields to assure us of the greatest recovery. questionsill had any about boom and bust, through the next month, i saw the answer with my own eyes. i became aware of the new techniques, the modern miracles of conservation the companies had devised. wasgan to realize that this something that stretched far beyond these familiar fields. powerthey were producing for the nation to run its cars and heat its houses, to run its factories and keep it strong. the ceaseless pounding of work was like a heartbeat pouring energy out to the veins of

america. ♪ >> and then the word came that on next monday morning, they were going to start drilling on our land. wellurse we hoped our would come in, but i cannot help thinking, suppose they hit a dry hole? before to ourd neighbors across the fields. and what about the folks back in town who don't own any land, what about them? what would oil mean to their future? again, i found the answer before my eyes. i found it on the morning tommy rson had forgotten his luncheon stopped by. that's the first time i knew the ted larson had taken a job with an oil company. there began to rely that were others, local people

working in new jobs, experts coming in, bringing their special skills and teaching them and turned to my friends. that oil understood will enrich the lives of hundreds of my neighbors who will never own a well or see a drop of petroleum. i finally knew for sure that the coming of oil was good for all of us. the wind of spring blows west across the lakes. .oming at last to this place ♪ narrator: but there is a new song in the air, a song of great promise. winter will come again, but it will never be the same. for this land is more than wheat now, and life is no longer at

the mercy of the seasons. now in this place, a new frontier is born, a new breeder of pioneers worked to bring forth the riches of the land. the pounding tempo rising from this prairie is the heartbeat of a great nation forever seeking a new american frontier. ♪ >> on the morning of december 7, 1941, japanese lanes attacked the fleet at pearl harbor. american history tv marks the 75th anniversary of the surprise 8:00 a.m.inning at saturday, december 10. show first-person

accounts by veterans and ceremonies at pearl harbor and a deep world war ii memorial in washington. in we will take your calls. that is only on c-span3. up next, author paul talks about his book, of arms and artists: the american revolution through painters' ." s john trumbull, benjamin west, and gilbert stuart. over onet is a little hour. >> we are delighted to have lcd presenting "of arms and he is the author of several books and essays on american artist.