door ready to head for home, which we were very anxious to get to. was mccarthy, reagan. what the hell that this guy have against the irish? >> from the national law enforcement, a discussion on the attempt on ronald reagan. the entire program air sunday at 4:30 p.m. eastern on american history tv, only on c-span3. >> we are standing in front of the turtle bay exploration park and museum in redding, california. come inside as we look at an exhibit that shares the agricultural history of the region. i think it is really important for us to remember that agriculture is one of the backbones of california.

even in far northern california, where it is mountainous and the trained does not really lend itself to a lot of big ag. it does lend itself to pockets of ag in a community that is close to the land. julia: welcome to turtle bay exploration park's exploration home. you are in "rooted in this land," which is a temporary exhibition we have this spring. i have been in redding 20 years. i have always known redding is an agricultural area. shasta county is an agricultural county. we have a lot of great photos of agricultural scenes, and we thought it was time to do a big exhibition that celebrates the history and modern practices of agriculture in our area. right now, we are standing on

wintu land. before european settlers got here, the native population lived in tune with the land where they did not cultivate crops in the way we think of growing crops. they cultivated the natural environment to their benefit. they grew willow trees back to make baskets. but their population size was right for the area. this particular spot was an amazing salmon fishery at the time. they lived off the land and lived well before white people got here in 1844. before that, people had been driving cattle and exploring through, but they had not actually settled. our wintu population and other populations were heavily influenced by that.

we want to celebrate the fact that these people were here and used the land. we have a wintu copper mortar. the baskets are for carrying crops. to celebrate the fact that these people are here still. but we are not really talking about them when we talk about the agricultural component of shasta county, because that is very much a euro-american institution imposed on this land. the first euro-american settler in shasta county was pierson b. reading. pierson arrives in 1844. he sets up shop. he had people arrive and start cultivating. he brought in cattle and started to do livestock industry, as well as cultivating and growing crops. he grew grapes here, which is

something a lot of people did not realize that something had been going on since 1844. reading comes in, sets up shop, he starts his rancho and begin selling land to other people. there is another rancho on the other side of the river. then, the gold rush strikes in 1849. reading, who is friends with sutter, finds out what is going on with the gold, the area has the potential, and goes to clear creek with native people and discovers gold himself on what is now known as "reading's bar." that became the beginning of the gold rush in shasta county. but ag was here before gold. we tend to celebrate the mining history of the area and forget about the roots, which are agricultural. reading, when california became a state, was still trying to

make sure his rancho got register. but he had to register his cattle brand with the state of california. in 1850, well into the 20th century, that system for registering brands get this leather cow-shaped head and stamp the brand on it and fill out the back with information. we have reading's brand and others in here to talk about the history. there is a wonderful book of all of the brand registries, which is really great historical research. we can learn more about families. one of the things we discovered through doing this exhibition is something we knew from living here. this is really a livestock area. it is range cattle and beef cattle today. that's one of the things that was wrought here initially. a lot of the hides were being shipped back east to boston. they were very valuable at the time.

this area underwent a lot of different changes. he was growing grapes and tears. ears. -fruits became a big deal, especially in the south in the anderson and happy valley area. we were the prune capital of northern california, at one point. irrigation changes that. all of a sudden, we can irrigate land. we can get more cattle, growing of hay and alfalfa in a year-round pasture. we get a dairy pasture, and slowly, we are back to beef cattle, which is one of our big exports out of the area. second only to trees, timber, which is an agricultural product, but you can't eat it. we only talk about food in this exhibition. cattle is our biggest export. our biggest dollar producer for agriculture in shasta county.

one of the things we did was a single list paper articles and old names like late and early 20th century, trying to get a handle on information of the various crops we were looking at. we found this 1888 listing of great growers in california. these are only people who registered. you can see all of these people are growing grapes. we only had 135,000 people in the county at this point. commercial grape growing had been successful for years by the 1920's. in 1960, 100% of the great -- grape acreage reported was devoted to wine, but it was only 10 acres. so growing collapsed, but then it expanded again.

it is not very many compared to other places in california, but it is a growing industry, so it is like a new prize. another success story is bees. not just honey, but bees. we of course have them for pollination purposes and for honey since i got here, but the queen bee industry that started because of a man named homer park. he began selling queen bees when he was in high school. he began the industry of specifically selling queen bees. his extended family, including his daughter and husband, are one of shasta county's big industries. apiary products, including bees and beehives, are a big economic driver.

they rent hives to people who grow crops that have to be pollinated by bees. they trade honey for people for permission to put bees on their property. and every day, they are raising and shipping out queen bees. you can also purchase starter packages for them to get beehives. i went out there to visit their facility. it is wonderful that this technology that was designed by homer park and honed over time as to what they are using to create these sellable queen bees. so they let us a lot of bee package. that is a picture of a good starter hive that they will send to someone who has hives and wants to restart their hives.

they are going to send them to people who want to restart their hives. get fresh bees every few years. antique wax knives. they used a very lightweight beekeeper veil, because they are working gloveless with bees. very gently. the bees trust them to sort out the queens and pull them out for shipping. i hope any guest that comes through gets a good snapshot of what northern california is in terms of agriculture and our region in redding. local people see themselves here and see the importance of the neighbors who are agricultural lists, even if they are not. it is a little microcosm of california, the california story. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its

caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2017] traveled totaff california to learn about its history. you can learn more about our cities to her on www.c-span.org. >> congress declared war on germany, entering world war i. a panel of authors and historians looked at what motivated the u.s. to get involved in what was called the great war. that promised mexico territory in the southwest united states. wilson'stalks about decision making progress in asking congress to declare war. his 45 minute event took