japanese war machines, the rest of the world would fall at the right time. >> just after 5:00 on oral history, survivors from the uss arizona, where thousands of crew members were killed was commissioned in 1944 and saw action in the pacific. she is remembered for one evident, that is the surrender of japan at tokyo bay. tour pearl harbor attack sites, part of world war ii, valor in the pacific national monument. for our complete american history tv schedule, go to c-span.org. >> on lectures in history, professor patrick allitt teaches about the california gold rush

in the mid 1800s. he describes how people got there, the physical geography, and the evolving technology used to mine gold. his class is about 50 minutes. prof. allitt: good morning everybody. i am going to talk mainly about california and the years following 1948. gold plate a very important role in american history. you think back to the conquistadors, they were fascinated by the quest for gold or it -- gold. the history of their conquest, first with the aztecs and then of the incas, is of an unquenchable desire -- 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.

they brought with them jewelers and goldsmiths. 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. it is about 100 miles up the road. what happened was, first gold was discovered, 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 beyond the line of settlement. suddenly the white settlement catches up quickly. here is the governor, describing what it was like meeting the georgia minors in 1829. "many thousands of vital profligate people flocked into georgia, from every front of the georgia.

whose vicious propensities when loosed from law and opinion, make them like the evil one, the devil, in his worst mood. after waiting all day in the 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. whiskey carts serve them as well. hundreds of combatants sometimes cnet fisticuffs, swearing, striking and gouging eyes." frontiersmen can only do these things. especially in the south, they would fight by gouging out one of the eyes of his combatants. that was regarded as victory in one of these fights. the army was sent into restore order in this chaotic scene. on this sheet i give you, the army major reported this. upwards of 200 persons presented a appearance of " half breeds,

whites, negroes, and their appearances to be as varied as their professions, thieves, . shopkeepers, peddlers and gamblers. there were also found in the hope was to colonels of the georgia militia. two candidates for the georgia legislator and to members of the gospel -- gospel. for no doubt attracted by the love of cold." this is a rich site of gold. a large quantity was drawn out es 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. five to six miles from here. the dome is thinly coated with gold. this is an important source. the people who already lived in the area where georgia gold took place where the cherokees. one of the native american societies. after the revolution the american government has been trying hard to integrate this native american nations into the united states saying learn to , become christians, learn literacy, learn to become farmers and hunters and gatherers. learn to become integrated in our society. that was the federal policy of the government. now suddenly it turns out that the cherokees are living on land for which the whites were very hungry. which principle would prevail? unfortunately the principle of racial exclusion.

the whites wanted to get what it -- rid of the indians altogether. in the election of 1888, a 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 how to read. one of the missionaries created to write down the cherokee language. the bible has been translated, many have become christians. many of them now war american dress or it this was -- dress. this is a highly integrated comedic -- 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 lands onto a place that was then called "indian territory." they had the seminoles, chickasaws. the idea was, there would be 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 land lottery to white settlers. to forcibly dispossessed the former inhabitants and handed over to the whites instead. this is the prelude to the trail of tears, by which the cherokee were shifted and forced to migrate several hundred miles under very adverse conditions,

with large numbers dying along the way. it is one of the great human rights violations of american history, particularly in georgia itself. last time, 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. as they said then, although the american armies were not particularly well led, they were more effective than the mexican armies. with the result that they were able to win a spectacular series of battlefield victories. by late 1847, the leader of one 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

marching triumphantly into mexico city. they were able to dictate the terms of the peace treaty that followed. this was the treaty of guadalupe go, -- hildago, whose geographical significance was that if asked area of mexico was not headed to the united states. california, nevada, new mexico and colorado. it was the southwestern quarter of the united states. certain things about it are important to remind you of. 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. after 1821, a few thousand mexican spirit -- mexicans. 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. just to give you an idea of how low it's population was, how many have been to san francisco? you know it is a fantastic natural harbor. you sail in through the golden gate, which is a narrow entrance, 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 a few streets. very quiet and sleepy place. it's feature significant was unimaginable at that time. now, this is a 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, even when it was still mexican territory. johan sutter came originally from switzerland and set up a trading fort. there it is in the upper picture. it was very different from a shop. the fact that it was a fort was a sign of how politically volatile the area was. he was expecting to be around, so he took precautions. -- so he took precautions against that. she wanted to sell lumber that can from the sierra nevada mountains. he sent one of his assistants up

the american river to design and build a sawmill. this is where the american river is flowing fast enough that it can turn the water will so it can saw it and send it further down the river to sutter's fort itself. one of the things you have to do to make an effective sawmill, one of the things you have to do is divert the river into a designed flume that turns water rapidly. in the mill, he found little flakes of gold. he reported back to his boss, i found gold. his boss said, [whispering] don't tell anybody. they could foresee this was a great thing. 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 tell 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. with a result that a massive incursion of people into california began to take place. this is the area where gold was discovered. this is sacramento. heter's fort was right there sends his 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. the richest area was about here/ , this is called the mother load. those red boxes are where the mining camps spread up. as you can see, they correspond very closely, as you would

expect, to the load itself. version ofimplified the coast of california. here is san francisco bay. one river is flowing south. this is the sacramento river. eventually it flows into the sacramento bay. it is parallel with the coast 100 miles inland. there is a coastal range here, then a big central valley. another river slowing north, the san joaquin river, which also flows into san francisco bay. this is the central valley. over here, some much higher mountains. what are they called? jenny? >> i don't know actually. [laughter] >> the sierra nevada? prof. allitt: the snowy mountains, nevada, yes that is right.

as you can tell from the map, 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. sort of in the foothills of the valleys. let's first of all hear how the news got back. can you come up and read? have you heard of william sherman? he was a famous general during the civil war, and on the right as a young man. he was a lieutenant in the u.s. army and 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 discoveries and spread through the land. everyone was talking of gold, gold, which soon adopted the character of a fever. some of our soldiers began to desert. citizens were trained with wagons and pat mills to go to the lines. we heard of men earning 50, 500 and thousands of dollars per days. 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 back to his seniors. not long after that, the president himself made a big speech. he said we have the president here with us. if you look at the backseat of the handout, you can see what the president said. this is just a few months after the initial discoveries were made. >> it was known that minds of the precious metals existed in california. these mines are more extensive and valuable than anticipated.

they account for the abundance of gold in that territory is extraordinary character, corroborated by the reports of officers in authentic service who have direct fax from personal observation. the explorations weren't the --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 rich mineral deposits have produced a surprising change in the state of affairs in california. labor commands the most exorbitant prices in all other pursuits is that of precision for the precious metals of abandoned. nearly the whole of the male population have gone to the district or it ships are deserted by their crews, and voyages suspended for want of sailors.

our commanding officer entertains 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 to withstand the temptations and remain faithful shall be rewarded. the gold has caused in california in unprecedented rise in price. prof. allitt: that is president polk. he is making this declaration about how the economy of california is being transformed. people are pouring in, and nobody wants to do any work except digging for gold. ships arrived in san francisco, the cruise desert as they want to go to the gold rigging. psychologists are very interests -- gold digging. psychologists are very interests 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

heat shields on spaceships. but it was mainly used for decoration and currency. it does not rest. you make coins out of iron. a gold coin persists. 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. all right, 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. this one is published in boston. an account of california, the wonderful cold regions, with

description of different routes to california. information about the country and 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. what they had in common was that they were all incredibly difficult. it was 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. iaststorm he asked -- storm 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. implied that you can see 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 is 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 best place in the

to die of malaria or yellow fever was there. [laughter] this was a difficult place just to live. three or four 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. people tried anyway, because the incentive was so great. inducements,direct nicaragua, the quickest, cheapest and safest. that is what they claimed. the third way was to go on the overland trail. of the three routes taken, this was done most frequently. as you know, from what we said previously in the course, the oregon trail has not started five or six years previous to this. from trial and error they had worked out that the best way to do was to start in independence,

riverri, go up the platte , 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. that's for the oregon farm was per between 1843 and 1849, a lot of people had done that. the various cutoffs were established. particularly the california trail with a cut off. this is approaching it overland rather than going by sea. the oregon trail intrinsically difficult by itself. if you took the california trail, it was even worse. you had to go into northern nevada to a place called the humblolt 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. to make matters even worse, you then had to cross the sierra nevada mountains themselves. it was harder crossing this year in nevada's been a was crossing the rockies. we lived in softer times than they did. already by then, one of the most famous incident in american cannibalism had taken place there. the donner party was a group of immigrants who set off from independence, missouri, to the california cut off, were partway up the sierra nevada mountains when a blizzard snowed them in. they could not go any further, but neither could they go down the mountains. the snow was too thick. many of them died, and the survivors ate the bodies of their relatives who died in order to survive. news of this spread rapidly.

anyone going to the gold rush is route taken by interstate 80. it is relatively the easiest way. they knew this was the kind of territory they were crossing. and so very rapidly between the first discoveries in mid-1848 and 1849, something like 80,000 people poured into this area around sacramento. coming by these various routes. the migration carried on for the next five or six years. here is something to think about, that it is 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 galling this must have been to mexico. not only did they lose the war,

but they did not notice for the previous 350 years that they were sitting, literally on a gold mine. it is one of those hysterical ironies. it can prompt different notions of the nature of good fortune. we need to talk about rivers. i said in doing this diagram that is is in the foothills of the sierra nevadas that most of the gold was found. in other words, it is in the place where rivers are flowing rapidly downhill into the flatlands of the central valley. if you mention the same thing, that is a birds eye view. looking at it from the side, it is something like this. if this is the central valley, and that's a high sierra's, the area where the gold was found was this area. why should that be?

tell us what you think it is found here. >> maybe because that is where the mineral 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 on to low land? >> it deposits sediments. 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 so it 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. in other words, fast flowing rivers carry lot of sediment. they slow down into the low lands, they lose energy and begin to deposit their load. they deposit gold first because it is the heaviest element. that is why it is such a good place to dig. look at this photograph. can you see that the river is meandering, flowing in a curve? kelly, when the river is flowing around a curve, is the current fast is on the outside of the band, are 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. what is happening all the time in the rivers is that 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 the course of the river used to be. we have things called oxbows which look like this. you can see it more closely. it used to be there, it used to be a bed before the river straightened itself, then the process starts again. think about what this means terms of the deposited gold. it means 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.

that means, that is where it will be dropped. 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. you can imagine going and looking across and seeing get flowing more rapid he. -- rapidly. the perfect place to stake a claim, if you are one of the california minors, was on the inside of the bend where the river ends. sure enough, that is where they found a lot of gold. one of the great things about the early days of the california old rush, it was a democratic kind of thing. anybody could do it. once you were there, all you needed was a shovel and a pan. it was like a wok. just like this, this minor is holding. you shovel into the pan some of the sediment from the riverbank.

beenputting water, gradually spin it around. you let that flow over the sides of the pan, with the heavier particles staying behind. gently andn doing it methodically. you take care and patience. you are left with a bed of gravel with gold flakes in it. you pick out the flakes of gold. in which it was done. it is a low-tech business. incidentally, when we look at the history of who got rich and the california gold rush, it was mainly the people, not who dug but who sold shovels, pans, donkeys, tents and food. that was the way to make a fortune. whether or not the diggers actually found gold, you got paid for the provision spirit you could charge a high price because the stuff had to go a long way. you could get top price for the sale of it.

i have lots of illustration of people using primitive recovery techniques, usually working in gangs of five or six. here is a more sophisticated device. it is called a blocker. a mixture of gravel and water is poured in at the top, it filters down through a series of sieves that are finer than the ones before. the course of gravel gets caught on top. in the lower level, you have a piece of rough or lock sapping and particles of old catch in the fabric. after you put the water across it, you are left with particles of gold to pick out. this became the actual currency in the gold district. , it starts to occur to some people that, if the gold is there, it must've come from

further upstream. it made sense to go upstream to find it. the answer was yes. here is how that works. back to the diagram of the hillside. you found lots of it lying about in the water down here. that, somewhere up here, there is a bane of gold -- , which gold bearing rock is exposed to the surface. it is eroded over the course of hundreds of thousands of years. the gold is formed under the earth by a geological process we can't go into. you get tectonic dressed and get the rocks coming together and it brings to the surface one of these rocks. that is why gold is found in mountain districts because of the irregularities of the earth's crust. let's imagine this is where the ein is.

if you look for the gold vein, you go upstream and test the water here. you go upstream again and tested here, you go upstream again and tested here. in each of these places, you find some gold, but less than you have down here because of the pace of the river. you get to a place where you find none at all. you find none because you have gone above the vein. hereu do closer testing and here, eventually this is where it is. it just looks like rock, but you can work out where it has comes from. there is the possibility of digging out, or trying to deed out the gold itself. it is difficult to do, but that is the logical conclusion the miners came to. let's look for the origins. that's why we have so many photos in the mountains. >> how do you spell vein?

same as a blood vein -- prof. allitt: same as a blood vein. it is miners terminology. there is different rhetoric to go with it. diggingtechniques of for gold require access to water. another group of very 40 minersurial found a lucrative business. they go to a place where there is a stream and diverse the stream where people are digging. it is just a primitive above ground can now. a wooden channel, which will guide the water -- water to places that people are digging. the very first strikes are here on the river, on the main parts of the river. longe start to say, for a time the river flowed here. that is a great place to dig.

we cannot do it if it is dried up and must be have a water supply. someone who is an entrepreneur to helping a flume them do it. high up in the nevada's comment mesot of men were holding flu to bring them down to the gold bearing county. you can see it going on here. there is a small stream, it is good enough that they can channel the water into the flume that carries it to the area they will be exploring for the minerals. occurs that it is pretty good getting it from the side of the river. think how much better it will be if we take into the bed of the river itself. how do we do that? beacon only do that by diverging the river. a lot of illustrators did pictures of what was going on to reconstitute it pretty well.

this is a place called murderess barb, somebody was murdered there. that is my deduction anyway. dam across the a river in the foothills, they built a diver sherry channel -- onary channel. it has been accumulating there for over hundreds of thousands of years. willsave introduced water -- waterwheels here. divergedenergy that them and then it goes up and down into the earth to bring up mechanically the stuff that is being produced. there is a steam engine here. some technology has been brought in. this is all expensive. a guy with a shovel cannot afford this. it is only people with capital can do work like this.

and 1852, on by 1851 people with capital are making money at mining. they can do these big, earth shifting operations, which are necessary to make it pay. what tends to happen is people who hoped they would be independent golddiggers, become employees of mining companies working for wages in projects like this. --y realize that the volume value has gone a long way down. they are still mining into the gravel, which is underneath the , or the old bed of the river itself. it was not long after that before somebody invests -- invented this method. said, the river has been gradually eroding the mountainside over the course of millions of years, let's beat up the process by firing against the mountainside at a very, very high-pressure jets of water.

to accelerate the erosion process 100 times over. they wanted to happen all at once. it is a matter of getting a flume upstream and guiding the water down until you bring it into big scale fire hoses. you ever seen the fire hoses high-pressure? if you put your fingers in front, it will break your fingers. you shoot it out of narrow gauged nozzles with great pressure against the mountainside. afterashes down sediment which it is then possible to gather the gold in the same way. the very first environmental laws passed by the state of california were in the 1870's to the end this practice. tons of debris was coming downstream and stifling the farms. 19 -- in the 50's, 60's and 70's mining was more important.

methods haveer been tried and gradually exhausted. it is a question of actually digging into the mountainside and try to follow the vein into the interior of the mountain it self. you get into the heart rock mining -- hard rock mining. you bring out more elements of gold. at first, little groups of werews tried it, but they edged out by people that capital to do it on a large scale. lookis what the big minds like by the 1860's and 1870's. the technology of photography started in the 1830's and was getting pretty good pictures of what it looked like. 0 miners become mine laborers. here is what happened in hard rock gold mine. you usually have teams of two

working at a technique called double checking. one guy holds a chisel and the other one hit it with a sledgehammer. a very high degree of trust. one holds the chisel and the other when hits it. turn it slightly, hit it again to dislodge the gravel. over the course of an hour, you have cut a whole, maybe this deep, then you are working against the rock face, which is semicircular. you have cut one there, one there and all the way around. ill them with gunpowder, lead fuses, light the fuses, retired to a safe distance and let them exposed -- explode. if you have done it right, an arc of explosion will dislodge the rock. when the dust and smoke have cleared, you can clear out all of the rock, bring it up to the surface and repeat the process

again. it is incredibly dangerous work. think may be right up to the present, being a minor is a job in which you are most likely to be killed at work here the roof can cave in, you can get caught by charges that did not explode. sparks that a hammer would set off. gas would sometime explode. suffocating gases made you not able to breathe and you can die. they were horrible working environments. in those days, they just had smoky candles and the atmosphere was terrible. it was a very deplorable way of life. gradually, improvements would develop. one was the invention of a improved explosion. it was a liquid explosive. more powerful than gunpowder and more volatile. if he gets to hot it spontaneously explodes. we have sad stories of that happening. the invention of drills, in which high-pressure water is the power source, instead of guys

with hammers. the problem with those is that they create showers of dust, so the miners breathed in a just heavy atmosphere and tended to die young of silicosis and silicosis,il sis -- a horrible way of life. underground railroads were built to load the wagons, take them to the pit shaft and have them drawn up to the surface. to thee hard rock gets surface, the question is, how do you get a gold out of this? it is no longer good to use the panning techniques. the parts per million are very small. there is not much gold, a lot of rock. you had to use what was called a crush her. you can see a waterwheel. fast flowing water turns the wheel. it is attached to this device, cams.is an axle bearing

as they go fast, these are attached to heavyweights. it is fed through here on a conveyor, these devices stamp it to reduce it to powder. that is how a stamping mail works -- mill works. next thing is to combine the powdered or with mercury. who has seen mercury? it is a metal that is liquid at room temperature. it is another way to get poisoned at the gold line. it is very toxic and you must not work around mercury or more curing compounds. that was not known at the time. is a mercuryrock oxide. he says, it appears from these reports that minds are found in the vicinity of the gold region. silver is another name for

mercury. it becomes as important as gold-mining, because this is the standard process to separate the metal from the order. you mix -- ore. withix the powdered ore water and pour in mercury. the mercury and the gold combine chemically. they are very heavy. itending get -- sending heat the entire thing. because the mercury is so volatile, a gets a prize and driven off and you are left behind with the gold. usually in a highly concentrated convert it into gold bars. that is how it is done in commercial mining operations. this lovelyow you photograph. this is about 20 years after the first invention of photography. theerfectly illustrates

demonstration lieutenant sherman made. this is san francisco pay in 1850. ships would come in from all over the world and never set sell again, because the cruise all deserted. they said gold and ran up to the hills, literally. this photograph of the whole harbor was these abandoned ships. it is dramatic. so that shopkeepers started to drag the ships on land. they converted them into stores because they were big containment areas. that is one thing, but there are other interesting things about this. there are promo lithograph, that is the style of picture at the time. tell us about this picture please. wait white -- while the boom comes over to you. i can't.

people are trading for gold. what are you surprised by as a viewer? close. the --clothes. >> everyone is pretty well dressed. prof. allitt: who do you think these guys are? >> farmers? prof. allitt: no. what country do they come from? they are chinese. what about these two? >> are they from another asian country. are. allitt: no, they mexican. the artist is showing us the traditional dress of all of the different groups of people who come from different parts of the world. that was the idea. this was america's first multicultural environment.

suddenly, people were coming from china, chile, mexico, england, all sorts of people had gathered. people were not used to that thing -- that sort of thing. this is a stereotype. yes, irish. it is the irish drunk. people come from all over the world, when the irish get here what do they do? they get drunk. some of the old stereotypes. with then illustration artists of imagination. what is it like when chinatown develops in sacramento? chinese life with three exclamation points. the chinese people living here in america, that is what the artist is getting at. this is meant to be a horse market in sonora. you can see the miners saloon. there are two chinese men here, the mexican here, the anglo guy

who is buying the force. the african-american over here. some of them would take their slaves to the goldmine. a great concentration of people were coming in from around the world. the idea with pictures like this is to say what a weird world is that. there was a result of very rapidly populating. this was above the president's speech in the handout. written aboutry 40 years ago describing the way in which gold accelerated the process of american settlement. >> the little grains of bright yellow metal established a frontline of civilization across the rocky mountains and to and from the ease, father out to the era planes. the prize of lighted the way, eliminating the darkness of earlier obstacles and convinced man that no matter how great the barriers, they could be

surmounted. after the man, came there baggage. necessitygons brought and the trappings of civilization. printing press and and some art objects. men found money with which to buy. out of the spending came roads, churches, and above all, women. in the family unit came, permanent assembly was normally assured. those who were serious about the new land settled down to extract their own kind of gold. grain or cattle in another section of the united states would commence. prof. allitt: thank you very much. he makes the point that if you look at the history of how communities develop, they started out as agricultural and turned into urbanized. in the mining camps it was the other way around. it started out as concentration of people building these mining settlements. played out,nes

gradually people began to disperse. prove long run, it would more than the mining habit itself. that is the example in which the normal process of urbanization was reversed. , we will talk about the origins of the history of the oil industry. -- next time we will talk about the origins of the history of the oil industry. thank you very much. it was great. >> choice every saturday evening at 8:00 p.m. and midnight eastern as we join students in college classrooms du jour lectures on topics ranging from the american revolution to 9/11. lectures in history are available as podcasts. c-span.org/history/podcast , or download them from itunes. with donald trump elected as

the next u.s. president, melania trump becomes our nation's second born foreign lady since louisa catherine adams. learn more about the influence of presidential spouses from c-span's book "first ladies." it is a lip into every presidential spouse in his desk american history. american history. it features interviews with 54 of the nation's leading historians. biographies of 45 first ladies and archival totals from each of their lives. published by public affairs is available wherever you buy books. now available in paperback. all weekend long, american history tv joins our cox communication cable partners to showcase the history of tempe, arizona.

to learn more about the city's visit c-span.org/cities tour. we continue with our look at the history of tempe. >> this is the historic niels pedersen health -- house in tempe, arizona. it is a victorian-style house. it was built by an immigrant farmer. at that time, it was considered one of the most eloquent homes in the salt river valley. peterson, who the house was in darfur was born in 1845 in denmark. he was the youngest of six siblings. he was not able to inhibit -- inherit any of the families plan. he had to go off on his own to establish a life for himself. opportunities in the united states, particularly in the west. at that time there was the homestead act, that was a lot

that allowed people to come out west and get 160 acres and start their own farms. if you are a u.s. citizen. that was a big incentive for him to come west and become a u.s. citizen. he started his farming operation here, which he was not allowed to do back in his native. he came here very early on. a small number of farmers were starting to show interest in this area. right around the year 1870. he was amongst that group that came here and started to figure out how to affirm productively. in the salt river valley. over the years, he was able to .row his empire acquire morland, acquire more business opportunities. by the year 1892, he was a very prominent businessman, entrepreneur here in tempe. this is not a typical farmhouse for it territorial arizona.

this is the type of house that you would build if you really made it. when this house was built, people took notice. elegantall it the most home and a salt river valley. saying it was very special. to local gave hope farmers, because if somebody can farm here in the desert through hard work and acquire the wealth it took to build a house like this, then that is something they could maybe aspire to as well. early on, the town was just getting started. it really needed to establish its institutions. settlers,he early especially those that came well off, they stepped up to help establish the local banks and churches downtown. mental and issue supporting education in town. he gave money to the local

schools. he was on the board of one of the banks in town. he had his own business. there was a peterson business in downtown tempe. he paved the way for other young danish farmers to come here to the arizona territory. they would work on his farm to pay back the passage to get here. theythose debts were paid, were able to go off and establish their own farms or businesses here. if you look at the early records oftempe, there are a lot danish names listed. that is because of peterson. an anchorb and for other immigrants who came through. he is an important figure in early tempe. having the house here makes it really special, because people can come in and walk through the rooms where he lived, and go out

on the porch and visualize what rural tempe would've been light. -- like privileging off into the field and picturing cattle grazing. so different than what it is today. i feel very lucky that we still have this home as a tangible tie, a direct tie to tempe's early days. to its agricultural roots. really a reminder of where we came from as an agricultural town. with peterson being a danish immigrant, this house is a great symbol of tempe's diversity. lot ofcame from a different places because there were opportunities here, and they were able to establish themselves here. susanna peterson, they never had children of their home to inherit the house. when they passed away in the 1920's, the closest relative to inherit the house was a man named edwin decade. he traveled around the west as a ministry.

he ended up inheriting the house. remodeled thee house pretty genetically. they updated it and changed it to a 1930's style. they also kept the farm going. the last prop was harvested in the 1960's. ae house was surrounded by housing subdivision starting in the mid-1960's. ved andeets were pa this house transformed from a rural house to a house that was in the middle of the city. this house is unique because when the farm was finely subdivided in the 1960's, they left the house. the hundreds of acres about south of feels that were here, they were subdivided, houses were built, industrial complexes were built. the house remained. today, we have this the taurean farmhouse that stands in the middle of all of the modern development.

ways, itntext, in some really shows how the town grew. tempe hadmbol of how agricultural roots, but as people started moving here and the population started exploding, particularly after world war ii, those farms really all filled in and it became a urban place. when visitors come to the peterson house, my hope is that they will enjoy this beautiful victorian house. enjoy the architecture and be able to imagine what it may have been light living in territorial arizona, and understand what it takes to come out to the middle of the desert and start from scratch. and be able to create a good life. and the able to prosper here. i think this is a tangible moment to the past. i hope it is a symbol of tempe's diversity. i hope it remains in the future that we will continue to be

proud of this big red house on the corner. >> this weekend we are featuring the history of tempe, arizona with our cox communication partners. other stops ont our cities tour at c-span.org's /cities tour. you are watching american history tv all weekend, every weekend on c-span3.