you can find recent appearances by many of the supreme court justices, or watch them in their own words, including one on one interviews in the past months with justices kagan, thomas, and ginsburg. there is a calendar for this term, a list of all current justices with links to see their appearances on c-span, as well as many other supreme court videos available on demand. follow the supreme court at c-span.org. on lectures in history, emory university professor patrick allitt teaches about the california gold rush in the mid-1800s, the physical geography, and the evolving technology used to mine gold. this class is about 50 minutes. prof. allitt: tutoring everybody. -- good morning everybody.

i am going to talk mainly about california and the years following 1948. you think all the way doctors conquistadors. they were fascinated by the quest for gold. the history of their conquest, first with the aztecs and then of the incas, is of an unquenchable desires for purchase -- for precious gold and metals. when the first english settlers came to jamestown, they hoped to find the same kind of supplies of gold found by the spaniards. there was a bitter disappointment in not finding gold in what is now virginia. america's first gold rush took place to where we are now in georgia in 1829. this was the georgia goldrush in north georgia. 100 miles north to the town of don monica, you can see the old lumpkin county courthouse has been converted into a gold-mining museum.

discovered,d was then people started pouring into the area in huge numbers because of the intoxicating possibility that gold would make them wealthy quickly. until then, this had been an area behind the settlement. suddenly the white settlement catches up quickly. this is the governor describing what it was like meeting the georgia minors in 1829. "many thousands of vital profligate people flocked into georgia -- idle profligate people flocked into georgia, whose vicious propensities when loosed from law and opinion, make them like the evil one, the devil, in his worst mood. cindy chattahoochee rivers, picking up articles of gold, they light fires on the night and play on their hands and grounds at dice, pushpins, and other games of chance for their

day's finding. hundreds of combatants sometimes cnet fisticuffs, swearing, striking and gouging eyes." to fight by used gouging out one of the eyes of his combatants. that was regarded as victory in one of these fights. the army was ordered to restore order to this chaotic scene. you, theheet i give only major record this. upwards of 200 persons presented breeds,ance of " half whites, negroes, and their appearances - to be as varied as thieves,fessions, peppers, and gamblers. two kernels of the georgia

militia, two candidates for the legislatures and two members of the gospel, for no doubt attracted by the love of cold." -- love og gold." this is a rich site of gold. a large quantity was drawn out of the lines between 1829 and into the 1870's. for a while it was minted to federal currency. the coin on the lift is a u.s. coin. after the confederate secession in 1861, the confederate bank also used georgia gold for minting. just by living here, you have seen an example of dell monaco gold on the state capitol building. don't these thinly coated -- the dome is thinly coated with gold. this is an important source. those that already lived in the area where georgia gold took place where the charities. --cherokees.

one of the native american societies. after the revolution the american government has been trying hard to integrate the american -- african-american -- native american nations. sailing, learn to become christians, learn literacy, learn farming instead of hunting and gathering. become interested -- become integrated into our society. that was the federal policy of the government. now suddenly it turns out that the charity -- cherokees are living on land for which the whites were very hungry. which principle would prevail? unfortunately the principle of racial exclusion. the white wanteds to get rid of the indian. a the election of 1888, successful candidate andrew jackson, they found someone else who wanted to get rid of the native americans. this is john ross, one of the cherokee chiefs.

if any community of native americans lived up to the hopes of the federal government, it was clearly the cherokee. they learned to read. one of t createdhem a syllabary to learn the cherokee language. the bible has been translated, many have become christians. many more american trust. this was a highly integrated community. nevertheless the principle prevailed, they have got to get rid of them. congress passed the indian removal act signed by president jackson, saying that the so-called five civilized tribes. this is president jackson. he says the five civilized tribes should move from the current length onto a place that was then called "indian territory." they had the seminoles, chickasaws, charity --

they wanted a forcible resettlement of the population on the other side of the mississippi river. this is oklahoma, then called indian territory. the georgia state government passed a law specifying these lands in the northern territory should be reallocated by a landline early -- land lottery to white settlers. to the trailrelude of tears, by which the cherokee were shifted and forced to migrate several hundred miles under very adverse conditions, which large numbers dying along the way. it is one of the great human rights violations of american history, particularly in georgia itself. in talking about the spread of american settlers and political

power, we talked about the mexican war. this was fought between mexico and the u.s. in 1846 to 1848. although the american armies were not particularly well led, they were more effective than the mexican armies. they could win a spectacular series of battlefield victories. leader of onethe of the american armies landed on the coast of the eastern coast of mexico, veracruz, led his army inland, and was able to overrun mexico city itself. on the right you can see a picture of general scott's army fighting triumphantly into mexico city. they were able to dictate the terms of the peace treaty followed. this was the treaty of guadalupe hidalgo, whose creation significance -- whose geographical significance was that if asked area of mexico was not headed to the united states.

-- vast area of mexico was not what handed to the united states. -- was now handed to the united states. california, nevada, utah, what is the southwest quarter of the united states now. this is now an area with a high population. then it's population was extremely low. only a few thousand spaniards had ever lived there. there was a low density of americans settled. it was mainly unoccupied territory. the reason it was unoccupied was because nearly all this land had very little rainfall, with a few exceptions like the northern california coast. too dry for ordinary agriculture. not many people could live there. how many have been to san francisco? you know it is a fantastic

natural harbor. you sail in through the golden gate into an enormous dewatering closed harbor. now one of the great cities of the world is right there. this is what it looked like in 1846 to 1847. just a handful of huts and st reets. it was a quiet and sleepy place. it's feature significant was unimaginable at that time. settler. he lived at a place called sutter's fort, the current site of sacramento, the state capital of california. i mentioned in a previous lecture americans had been moving into texas even when it was still a mexican territory. in the same way american settlers had been moving into california. came originally

from switzerland and set up a trading fort. it was very different from a shop. the fact that it was a fort showed how volatile the area was. he was expecting to be around, so he took precautions. precautionse took against that. she wanted to sell lumber that can from the sierra nevada mountains. he sent one of his assistants up andamerican river to design build a sawmill. this is where the american river is flowing vastly enough that it can turn the water will so it can saw it and send it further fortthe river to sutter's

itself. to make an effective sawmill, one of the things you have to do is divert the river into a designed for -- a designed flume that turns water rapidly. found littlehe flakes of gold. he reported back to his boss, i found gold. [whispering], don't tell anybody. you know how bad anyone is keeping secrets. the only way to have a secret is to never tell anyone. because as soon as you don't someone, the secret gets out. that is what happened in this case. it wasn't long before the news spread back east. it spread rapidly all over the world. s massive incursion of people into california began to take place.

was is the area where gold discovered. this was sacramento. hiser's fort sends assistant to colombia, where the gold had been discovered. we know from extensive geological work that the goldfield is about the area shown in yellow. about here/area was this is called the mother lode. those red boxes are where the mining camps spread up. as you can see, they correspond very closely, as you would expect, to the lode itself. imagine a simple five version of the coast of california -- simple five version of the coast of california. south.er is flowing

this is the sacramento river. coastparallel with the 100 miles inland. another river slowing north, the san joaquin river, which also flows into san francisco bay. this is the central valley. some much higher mountains. what are they called? >> i don't know actually. [laughter] the sierra nevada? prof. allitt: the snowy mountains, nevada, yes that is right. lots of mountains flow out of the sierra nevadas. the northern ones join the sacramento river, and the southern ones flow into the san joaquin river. that is kind of schematic of the geography of california. it is important that you get a sense of what that looks like.

the gold is here. foothills of the valleys. let's first of all hear how the news got back. can you, and read? william sherman was a famous general during the civil war, and on the right as a young man. he was witnessing what was happening when the gold was discovered. here is lieutenant german. >> the spring of summer of 1840 advanced. the reports can faster from the gold mines. stories reached fabulous discovery has spread to the land. everyone was talking of gold, gold, which soon adopted the character of a fever. citizens were trained with wagons and pat mills to go to the lines. we heard men of turning 50 and thousands of dollars per day.

at times it seemed as though someone would reach solid gold. prof. allitt: thanks very much. as the news gets up, his army officer reports to the scene. not long after that, the president himself made a big speech. if you look at the backseat of the handout, you can see what the president said. just a few months after the initial discoveries were made. >> it was known that minds of the precious metals consisted of an conceivable extent in california. these mines are more extensive and valuable than anticipated. they account for the abundance of gold of such an extraordinary character, corroborated by the reports of officers in authentic service who have derived facts from observation. the explorations weren't the belief that the supply --warrant

the belief that the supply is large. it appears from these reports that minds of quicksilver are found in the gold region. one is now being worked and believed to be the most productive in the world. the effects produced by the discovery of these mineral deposits have produced a surprising change in the state of affairs in california. labor commence the most exorbitant prices in all other pursuits is that of precision for the precious metals of abandoned. nearly all of the male population has gone to the district. the coast is deserted by their crews, and voyages suspended for want of sailors. apprehensions that soldiers cannot be kept in the public service without a large increase of pay. desertions in this command has become frequent. he recommends those that wish was to end the strong -- -- those that withstand the strong temptations shall be rewarded. this has caused california and

unprecedented rise in price. prof. allitt: that is president woke. -- president polk. he is talking about the way in which california's economy is being transformed. people are pouring in, and nobody wants to do any work except digging for gold. interestssts are very in this gold fever that takes people over. the curious thing about gold is that it isn't particularly useful. i don't know if you thought about this very much. today it's possible and things like semiconductors, they use gold for semiconductors and heating stations. but then it was mostly used for decoration, and sometimes chemically entered so that you can make coins. it is not really useful. nevertheless, it was incredibly valuable. one of those many things that have been so important to our

history, like gold and tobacco, on which great fortunes were made, even though they weren't actually essential. people started pouring into california from all over. even in england, france, germany, south america, even china, there was enormous amount of enthusiasm about finding ways to get the california. lots of handbooks like this were published. an account of california, the wonderful cold regions, wit descriptionh a to roster california. in the ancient and modern discoveries of gold. in other words, help for travelers on how they are going to get there. there were essentially three ways of getting there. they were all incredibly difficult. the first is unbelievably difficult.

1849, still another 20 years before you could get there by railroad. the first railroads were invented, but they were very short lines. one way was by doing in a clipper ship. this was a new type of ship with a lot of sail, capable of sailing fast. one way was to sail from the east coast all the way through the south atlantic, then around cape horn. what is that like? horrible. the storm he asked waters in the entire world. you are coming into the teeth, the could take weeks to get around. you could get shipwrecked along the way that was one way of doing it. lots of people tried that. this is an ad for it. a ship called the california. the artist has implied that you can do the coast, which is not true. that is one possibility.

the second possibility was to go by steamship. instead of going around the tip of south america, instead of sailing into east coast, the caribbean where the crossing his narrowest. then going across from nicaragua by land, then taking a second ship which would take you to san francisco. the advantage of doing it that way was that the journey was a great deal shorter. the disadvantage was that just about the bliss place -- the best place in the world to die of malaria was there. [laughter] this was a difficult place just to live. three more decades later, people had successfully built the suez canal and failed because all of the labor force died because of these horrible tropical diseases.

that is a risky business. it was tried anyway because incentive was so great. safest, is what they claim. the third way was to go on the overland trail. of the three routes taken, this was done most frequently. has not started five or six years previous to this. the best way to do it was start in independence, missouri, go across to the sweetwater river, across the rockies of the lowest point and is self pass, then pick up the headwaters of the state where until it meets the columbia river, until you reach portland, where the columbia reaches the willamette river. lots of her -- lots of people

had done this by 1849. the various calls were established -- cutoffs were established. this is approaching it overland rather than going by sea. the oregon trail intrinsically difficult by itself. taking the california trail was even worse. through place umboldtthe humbled -- b river. looks to the time it is bone dry. you have to cross this incredibly hot, arid, because he was desert. people die from various things. you then had to cross the sierra nevada mountains themselves. it was murder crossing the sierra nevada's than it was crossing the rockies. thanived in softer times

they did. one of the most famous incident in american cannibalism had taken place there. a group from independence, missouri, took the california code of, were partway up the sierra nevada mountains when it blizzard -- when a blizzard stopped them in. they could not go any further, but neither could they go down the mountains. the survivors ate the bodies of their relatives who died in order to survive. news of this spread rapidly. isone going to the gold rush the rest of taken by interstate 80. it is relatively the easiest way. they knew this was the kind of territory they were crossing. o very rapidly between the first discoveries, something

like 80,000 people poured into this area around sacramento. on for theon carried next five or six years. this is something easy to forget. it was only in 1848 california became part of the republic. until then, it has been part of mexico. most americans probably did not know where it was. suddenly it becomes part of america. and suddenly it turns out to have been a credible abundance of wealth. how: this must have been -- galling this must have been to mexico. not only did they lose the war, but they literally did not earsce for the past 350 y that they were sitting on a gold mine. it can prompt different notions of the nature of good fortune. we need to talk about rivers.

diagramn doing this that is is in the foothills of the sierra nevadas that most of the gold was found. it is in the place where rivers are flowing rapidly telling hill -- rapidly flowing downhill into the flatlands of the central valley. let us look at it from the side. it is something like this. this is the central valley, and that is the high sierras. the area where the gold was found was this area. why should that be? tell us what you think it is found here. that is wherese the deposits were based on the geology of the area? prof. allitt: they started looking in the river itself. what happens to a river when it

is flowing out of the mountains into the land? >> get deposits sediment. prof. allitt: that is right, it is carrying sediment. why is it deposited there? that is the lowest part. that is where the water cannot move and sediment gets left. prof. allitt: what carries the most sediment, a fast-moving river or a slower one? >> fast. prof. allitt: yes, exactly. this is the area where the river starts to slow down. and as it does so, it drops the sediment it is carrying. does it first drop the heaviest or the latest things? >> the heaviest. prof. allitt: yeah, such as? >> rocks, gold. prof. allitt: exactly, gold is very dense. as the rivers slow down into the low lands, they lose some of

this energy and begin to deposit their load. they deposit gold first because it is the heaviest element. that is why it is the best place to date. -- place to dig. look at this photograph. can you see that the river is meandering, flowing in a curve? when the river is flowing around a curve, is the current fastest on the outside event or the inside? the outside, why? >> not quite sure. i am not sure quite sure why it flows faster. prof. allitt: well you are absolutely right. it is because the water flows in a straight line. it flows straight downhill until it hits the bank, then flows in a straight line until it hits again. the bends are tending to become

more exaggerated. if you have a window seat in a plane and look down, you can almost see where part of a river used to be. we have things called oxbows which look like this. you can see it more closely. before thebe a bed river straightened itself, then the process starts again. think about what this means terms of the deposited gold. it needs not only in this transitional area coming out of the mountains, it means the best place to look is on the inside of the bends. that is where the current is flowing more slowly. you can see on the photograph there is a little beach on the inside of the bend, for the water is hardly flowing at all. the perfect place to stake a claim, if you are one of the

california minors, was on the inside of the event where the river ends. one of the great things as it was a democratic kind of thing. anybody can do it. you had to get there, but once you are there all you needed was a shovel and a pan. just like this minor is holding. but you do is you shovel into the pan some of the sediment from the riverbank and then gradually swirl it around so that you make a suspension of the lighter particles in the water. and just let it flow over the sides of the pan with the heavier particles staying behind. it takes a lot of care and patience. eventually what you're left with is a bed of gravel with gold

flakes in it. and then you pick out the flakes of gold. that is the way in which it was done. a very low-tech business. at thetally, only look history of who got rich in the gold rush, was that it was mainly the people who not only dug, but sold shovels and pans and donkeys and sold food. that was the way to make a fortune. whether or not the diggers actually found the gold, you get .aid for the provisions and you can charge a high price because the stuff had to come a long way and was in incredibly high demand. you can get top price for the sale of it. there are also illustrations of people using very primitive recovery techniques, usually working in gangs of five or six. here a more sophisticated device. it is called a rocker. a mixture of gravel and water is poured in at the top and it filters down through a series of

sids -- sieves. the coarser gravel gets caught youop of the lower-level, have a piece of rough burlap sacking or maybe a bit of carpet, and the particles of gold catch in the fabric. after you sluice the water cross it, you can pick out the particles of gold. this became the actual currency in the gold district. eventually, it starts to occur to some people that if the gold is there, it must have come from further upstream. doesn't make sense to go upstream to actually find it? was yes., the answer here is how that works. diagram of the hillside. you have found lots of it just lying about in the water down here. that means that there is somewhere up here, there is

actually a vein of gold or gold bearing rock which is exposed to the surface. as water flows over, it is being eroded over the course of hundreds of thousands of years. the gold is formed to deepen the earth under incredibly high pressures by geological process we can't go into here. when you have tectonic thrust, sometimes you get the bottling of the rock strata. usuallywhy gold is found in mountain districts, because of the irregularities of the earth's crust. let's imagine this is where the gold vein is. if you decide to look for the gold vein itself, here is how you do it -- you go upstream and you test the water here, and then you go up stream again and test the water, and then upstream again and tested here. at each of these places, you find some gold, but less than you have done here because of

the pace of the river. eventually you get to a place where you find none at all. what you have done is gone above the vein. then he do much closer testing, and eventually this is where it is. it's hardly self-evident. it just looks like rock. but you can work out where it comes from. a possibility that trying today got the gold itself is difficult to do, but that is the logical conclusion that the miners did was to look for the origins itself. that is why we have so many photos up here in the mountains. it is called a vein or a drift. there are a lot of different terminologies, depending on what mine you are in. all the techniques of digging for gold required access to water.

again, another group of very entrepreneurial 49ers realized we'resuppliers itself highly lucrative businesses. that is going to replace there is a stream and diaper industry into the place where people are digging, usually by digging a flume, which is just a primitive aboveground canal. first strikes are here on the river, on the main part of the river. eventually people start saying for a long time the river flowed here. that is a great place today. we can't do it if it is dried up. but then, someone who is building a flume data this area to help them do it. high up in the sierra nevada is, a lot of the enterprising and were building flumes to bring it down to the gold bearing country .

you can see the process going on. there is a small stream. they have built a very primitive rock dam. they can challenge water into the flume which carries the water to where they will be exploring for minerals. thatit occurs to somebody it is good getting it from the side of the river, think how much better it is going to be if you actually dig into the bed of the river itself. how do we do that? we can only do that by damming and diverging the river. this is a. s this is a period where a lot of illustrators drew pictures of what was going on. we can reconstitute it very well. you can see that what has happened here is they have built a dam across the river itself, and have built a diversionary channel. -- the bed of the

channels now dry, so they can pick up the sediment that has accumulated there over thousands of years. you notice also that they have introduced waterwheels here. gethe river narrows, you faster water. that allows you to bring up mechanically the stuff that is being produced. as you can imagine, this is expensive. a guy with a shovel cannot afford this. it is only people who have capital back into work like this. it is early on. by 1850 one, it is people with capital for making money mining. earthmovingld machinery that is necessary. coming out and hoping they can be independent golddiggers actually become employees of mining companies

working for wages on projects like this. doneile you had -- then quite far to the earth. they are mining into the gravel which is underneath the bed of the river itself. before't long after that somebody invented this method -- hydraulics. they said look, the river has been gradually eroding the mountainside over the course of millions of years, let's speed up the process by firing against the mountainside a very high inssure jet of water to effect accelerate the erosion process hundreds of times over. a matter of getting a flume upstream and guiding the water down. they are like big scale fire hoses.

if youe strong enough put your finger in front of it, it will break your fingers. it at ald -- shoot narrow gauge nozzle with a lot of pressure, and this washes down sediment out of which it has been possible to gather the gold in the same way. raulicking. the first environmental laws in california were to and this is. -- this practice. it was bad for the the farmers. and 60's and early 70's, the minor league was more important than the farming. -- the mining was more important than the farming. oft it is a question actually digging into the mountainside and trying to find the vein into the interior of the mountain health. -- mountain itself. what you're bringing out of the mine is an enormous quantity of --nly quartzite, among could

among which there are elements of gold. bit by bit they were edged out by people with capital to do it on a large scale. this is what the big mines looked like by the 1860's and 1870's. the technology of photography was good enough that we got pretty good pictures of what it looks like. laborers -- mine laborers. here's what happens in a hard rock goldmine. you have teams of two working a .echnique called double jacking one guy is holding a chisel against the rock face and another guy is hitting it with a sledgehammer. there is a high degree of trust among friends. you turn it slightly and hit it again to dislodge the gravel. over the course of an hour of hard hammering, you have cut a

hole maybe this deep. working against a rock face which is more or less semicircular, you cut one there and one there all the way around , then fill them with gunpowder, lead fuses to each one of them, like the fuses, retired to a safe distance, and then let them explode. , anou have done that right arc of explosions will dislodge .he rock in that arc when the dust and smoke have cleared, you can go and clear out all that rock and bring it up to the surface, and then repeat the process again. it is incredibly dangerous work. up to the present, being a minor is the job in which you're most likely to be killed at work. you can imagine the roof can k-fed, you can get caught with charges that didn't get sent off. methane gas will sometimes

explode. sometimes there are suffocating gas is where you can't breathe and die in a mine. they are a horrible working environment. they just have smoky tallow candles. in every way a very deplorable way of life. gradually, improvements were developed. unimproved explosive called nitroglycerin, a liquid explosive. -- moreful than powerful than gunpowder, but more volatile. then the invention of drills, in which high-pressure water is the power source instead of simply guys with hammers. the problem with those is they created showers of dust that the miners tend to be breathing in, and tended to die young with pneumoconiosis. horrible way of life.

little underground railroads were built so that you can load the or onto wagons -- ore onto wagons, and have a drought -- brought up to the surface. when the rock gets to the surface, then the question is how you get the gold out of it. it is no longer good to use the panning techniques. the parts per million are very small. there's not a lot of gold and a lot of rock. this is a crusher. on the right you can see a waterwheel. device,tached to this which is an axle bearing cans. as they go past these rods, they are at -- are attached to great heavyweights. it to reduce stamp it to powder.

is to combine the mercury.ore with who has seen any mercury? it is a metal that is liquid at room temperature. this is another way in which you get poisoned in the gold mines. we now know it is very toxic. that was not known at the time. this reddish rock on the left is called cinnabar. that is mercury oxide. it appears in these reports that minds of quicksilver are found in the vicinity of the gold mines. quicksilver is another name for mercury. cinnabar mining becomes as important as gold-mining. mix thepens is you powdered ore with water and make a sort of sludge. then you pour in mercury, and the mercury and gold combine

chemically. they are very heavy. by sending it across sloping gradients, you caused this gold and mercury compounds to fall to the bottom. then you keep the whole thing. because mercury is already volatile, it is vaporized and gets melted off, and then you are left with gold and a highly concentrated, p or form -- pure form. that is how it is done as a commercial mining operation. years after the first invention of photography. it perfectly illustrates the order that lieutenant sherman made. this is san francisco bay in 1850. ships would come in from all over the world, and would never said sale again. the cruise all deserted -- crews all deserted. this incredible photograph of the whole city -- the whole

harbor i should say -- with these abandoned ships. one thing shopkeepers started to do was to drive the ships up on land and just converted them into stores. that is one thing. there are other interesting things about. there are a lot of crow molded the rats -- chromo-lithographs. a bar and a gambling saloon. >> people are trading gold, i think? prof. allitt: what are you meant to be surprised by as a viewer? clothes.he >> ever what is pretty dressed.

farmers? prof. allitt: what country do they come from? >> i can't really tell. prof. allitt: chinese. how about these two? >> are they from another asian country? prof. allitt: they are mexican. ist the artist is doing showing us the traditional dress of all the different groups of people who have come from different parts of the world. that is the idea. this is america's first multicultural environment, were suddenly there are people from mexico,hile, switzerland, all sorts of people have gathered. people were used to that sort of thing. this is a stereotype. irish. the typical irish drunk.

what a barrister? that's what did the irish do? they get drunk. of thean illustration artist administration. what is it like in chinatown? suddenly a chinatown develops in sacramento. the idea is how weird is that? chinese people are living here in america. that is what the artist is getting at. similarly in this one. this is best be a horse market in sonora. in the background, you can see the saloon. there are two chinese man, a , the guy who is buying the horse, african american over here. someone take their slaves to the goldmine. a good concentration are coming from all over the world. the idea of pitchers were to say what a will world is that -- weird world is that?

this is the president speech in the hideout. .est in the handout this is expiring the way in which gold accelerated the process of americans government >> grades of yellow metal establish different kind of civilization along the rocky mountains and drew men from the east farther out onto the air and planes. the glittering prize lighted the way, illuminating the darkness of earlier obstacles, and convince men that matter how great the terriers, they could be surmounted. after the men came their package, both material and cultural. freight wagons brought not only necessities, but the trappings of civilization -- printing presses, the refinement of books and some are processes. men found money with which to roads,d with them came civic development, churches,

schools, and above all, women. when the family unit came, permit assembly was best permanent assembly was assured. those in the new and settled them to check their own kind of gold -- grain or cattle. prof. allitt: thank you very much. he makes the point that if you history of how communities developed, they started off as agricultural and economies asme people gathered in towns. in the mining camps, it started off as concentrations of people filling the settlements. after the mines have played out, gradually people began to disperse into a farming population. it was an afterthought. that is an example of the way in which the process of .rganization was reversed we will talk about the origins of the history of the oil industry.

[captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2016] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> join us every saturday evening at 8:00 p.m. and midnight eastern as we join students in college classrooms to hear lectures on topics ranging from the american revolution to 9/11. lectures and history are also available as podcasts. visit our website c-span.org/history/podcasts, or download them from itunes. all weekend, american history tv is featuring tempe, arizona. they recently visited many sites showcasing its history. the city is home to arizona state university, established in 1885. it was originally named the tempe normal school. let mark. all weekend here on

american history tv. while in tempe, we visited tempe town lake to learn more about the city's growth, from public information officer chris baxter. >> ok, chris, we are typically in a van driving around, not on water in a boat, where are we right now? >> we don't do things the normal way. we always try to do it a little bit different. we are in the middle of tempe town lake, what's interesting is that most people don't have lakes that are brand new. i like is going to be 17 years old very soon. >> tell me why it was built? >> this used to be a stretch of the salt river. salt river runs quite a way throughout arizona and it was dammed up in the 1930's when roosevelt dam was built.

this beautiful stretch of river bed that has fish and water flowing again it was dry. people used to dump origin here, they used to do horrible things to this. we worked hand-in-hand with the army corps of engineers and we took everything out of here that had been here for decades and have turned this into a lake. 1.5 lake is responsible for billion dollars worth of economic development in our community. >> you lived here before this was here. what changes have you seen? >> pretty much nothing that you see here was here with the exception of the two bridges that you see. >> we are talking about the buildings around here, we are talking about all of this, all the shops, the restaurants. >> nothing was here before 1999. pretty much as far as the eye can see is all new and the lake is responsible for it. the reason that our city exists is this is a really great place

to cross the river and where we are right now is exactly where our city was founded. >> this is here just because of the ferry crossing? >> this was the fairy crossing and the building that you see -- the fairy crossing -- the ferry crossing and the building that you see behind you, the white building with columns, that was our first business. between the ferry and the mill, this is how our city got its start. >> tell me what is the city like now? >> well, one of the most urban and densely populated cities in arizona. we are the number one college town in america. >> wow. >> we are doing amazing things. tempe is known for being innovative. turning a river into a lake, it is pretty original? one of the things we had to do was we had to be up to create a lake that could become a river

water because there is that runs from the salt river and it comes down this way. we actually have a working dam, so that when it rains, this lake becomes a river, we can let it -- out as much water as we need to and we can raise up the dam again and have a lake. >> now, how is it utilized recreationally. you have this young population here. does it draw people? >> this lake has 24.4 million -- 2.4 million visitors every year. the second largest tourist destination in all of arizona. second only to the grand canyon. >> does occur the population as well? >> our population has grown quite a bit. we have condos. we have condos that are here and across the lake, so just the sheer building of those has resulted in a lot of new residents but beyond that, the

companies that you see we have fortune 500 companies that have located here and that's because people want to play in tempe town lake. if you were working in this building behind you, a lot of the building -- a lot of the people and those building have standup paddle boards. a lot grab their board, walk out, hit the water in lunch hour or right after work and there they are. we have a lot of tech companies that are here. we have go daddy's a few miles down the road, this is the lifestyle that millennials want. our average age is 28. this is a really active community. >> do you feel that reflex in the community with new ideas and a lot of energy, how did the students play a role here? >> well, the students played a huge role not only in the community but in the world in general. one of the things there's a huge amount of research that college students are a part of. they have a cure for ebola that originated out of the biodesign

institute at arizona state university two miles down the road from here. they built components for the mars rover at asu. the inventions, the ideas, new companies are created here all of the time. >> why tempe, why do the businesses thrive in tempe? >> i think the reason people come here is because of the innovative nature. there is nobody here that says you can't do that. we think that the best think to that's the best thing to do is say let's figure out a way to say yes, let's figure out a way to support your dream and that to me is probably what makes us unique. we didn't say we like having an ugly river bottom. we have to have pretty water. how do we get the pretty water and we, you know, spent 30 years figuring out the answer. we started in 1965, this concept was created by asu, arizona

state university, the dean and his architecture students came up with this idea. over the 30 years, we figured out how to fund it, we figured out what it would take to support the annual maintenance of it, and for about $100 million, we got $1.5 billion back. plus all the beautiful places to live, all the great places to work and truly hundreds of new businesses coming in for the sake that they want to be here. >> you are from tempe originally, what do you want to see for your city next? you have seen all the growth and changes, what's your ideal scenario for your city? >> you know, what i think tempe wants, the city itself, what i really think tempe wants is make the world a better place. not only that but our businesses, we have a lot of young people and really the goal of the city is to help residents achieve dreams. that's the goal of any city.

we want our residents do what they want to do. if they want to cure disease, great. if they want to open a popsicle stand, that is fine, too. they want to come to work in paddle board on their lunch hour, that is fine. this weekend, we are featuring the history of tempe, arizona, together with our cox communications cable partners. learn more about tempe and our other stops on our cities to her -- tour on her website. you are watching american history tv, all weekend, every weekend on c-span3. >> almost white 400 americans were killed on the morning of december 7, 1941, 75 years ago. 10, saturday, december american history tv will mark the anniversary beginning at 8:00 a.m. eastern. we will show archival films, veterans and civilians first

person accounts, and the 75th anniversary semi's at the pearl harbor and world war ii memorial in washington. historians will take your calls. that is saturday, december 10, beginning it 8:00 a.m. eastern here on american history tv on c-span3. on march 5, 1946, british prime minister winston churchill gave a speech at westminster college in missouri. the speech later became known as the iron curtain speech, because of churchill's condemnation of the soviet union's cold war policies. westminster college commemorated the 70th anniversary of the speech by inviting author alan watson to discuss his book churchill's legacy. this program is one hour. ♪