oldest baptist church congregation in the united states founded by roger williams in providence, rhode island. the tour also includes a visit to a native-american cultural center in alabama and a christian sect in albany, new york. american history tv in prime time friday at 8:00 p.m. eastern. in the years before the arrival of the transcontinental railroad, tacoma was not similar to other cities of the puget sound and really the southwest. the percentage of the population was really mostly native-americans. coming over the trail and then some by sea small little villages really of americans and europeans had arrived.

but mostly along the shoreline, and that was because the primary purpose here for people that were settling was cutting timber and milling timber. that was then sent down to san francisco. so that prompted a lot of entrepreneurs and small investors and adventures to come up and begin to build cities. and so seattle, bellingham, olympia, all were small, sma small-ish communities of 50 to 100 people. really the pride of the transcontinental. but after the conclusion of the civil war and the announcement really that the railroad was coming, every community, you know, hoped that they would be

the terminal sit a, that they would be chosen for the railroad. so it came down to really being between seattle, tacoma and olympia. and so by 1873, by early 1873 the transcontinental obviously was being built in two directions. so it didn't just have one rail. but a big decision was congress in the congre in the charter for the railroad had determined that a section from the columbia river to the puget sound needed to be completed and the railroad company needed to bring steam engines to saltwater by december of 1873. in july of that year the tracks had been laid from columbia about halfway to where tinio has

been laid from i-5. and all that year the railroad had been entertaining offers from various communities. cash, land, port facilities, whatever the city could put together to lure the railroad there. in july of 1873, in july of '14, the final decision was made and tacoma was selected. and the nurmtterminal city, the choice of conclusion for the line was setup not only to be an arrival point for goodies and travelers but also for the arrival of the telegraph, which meant news and banking and communications. so the course of the

transcontinental railroad at the end of the 19th century was a big deal for the far west. the reason tacoma was picked by the mp, there's a multitude of reasons, but the primary reason is first of all it was an absolutely perfect harbor, especially for sailing vessels. but even today it's an ideal harbor. deep water harbor, tight flats and lots of areas for wharves. you could bring the train right up to the dock and be able to load goodies off and on the ships. so that was part of it. frankly, another reason was that the railroad was built on land grants. the federal government basically divided the whole route into -- into square mile blocks and

surveyed it. and the railroad like a checkerboard got every other parcel as payment for building the railroad. in seattle most of seattle had already been staked, claimed and was owned by the residents of seattle. in tacoma a much smaller population, much more vacant ground. they railroad came here because they could literally own the city, and indeed they did when they arrived here. and that's really tacoma's, the first half of its life. the railroad came in and then began to profit off the sale of land within the city. so it went from forest land that was practically valueless once the trees were cut to suddenly urban real estate that they could profit off of. so they brought wealth with them, and then they were able to turn around and profit from it. and we see elements of that

today, too, because not only did the railroad own the land and thereby own the terms by which they would sell the land to someone who wanted to build a building or whatever, house. but in the days before building codes and zoning they were able to enforce their own ideas about how they wanted the city to look. and you very much sense that today here on the campus. these sturdy brick warehouses were all built under the guidelines that were imposed by the railroad. so the builders of the warehouses would meet the cash terms to buy the land from the railroad in the first place, but the railroad then dictated the design, the construction meth uld od of the buildings themselves. so all these warehouses are pretty much the idea of the

force the building standards the railroad had. by the 1930s and then into the '40s, the railroad began to kind of recede a little bit as the automobile took over and the passenger travel by rail garn to fade away. all of the goodies that came and went moved out into the industrial port area. and the prairie line became almost forgotten in a way. it was still a utility, still used, but it wasn't appreciated or understood for the story that went with it. and really after the second world war even passenger service largely stopped on the prairie line. in 1955, thereabouts, the last

passenger service stopped traveling on the prairie line. by the 1990s, though, the city itself began to go thru a real revival. and because of the sturdy, well-built infrastructure, the built environment of tacoma, the recovery of the city largely happened around the reuse of the historic buildings that were already here. and it was during that period people began to realize, hey, wait a minute, the origin of the city is still intact. it's still here and still functioning. so in the 1990s, and into the current century, after 2000 the campus -- the university of washington launched the campus here. they had been downtown. they moved to the warehouse district and began buying up all the old empty warehouses and building a modern day campus.

and a few years ago now, about 2010 with the expansion of the library, for the first time people began to talk about actually intruding on the 80 foot right-of-way of the prairie line. that was conversation in building out the campus that they would start to encroach. and then somebody remembered that the 80 foot right-of-way is where everything started, and the university made a very kind of courageous decision to keep the 80 foot right-of-way as open space, to keep the loading docks and covered pedestrian ways and to keep as much as they could the language of the railroads still intact. and today the prairie line as we see it, although it's been hard scaped and modernized for campus

use, for pedestrian use because rail cars don't use it anymore, it's now this sort of linear central open space of the campus. so for people coming here they don't just enjoy a modern campus, they get a very authentic look at the narrative of not just tacoma but a big chapter in american history. this weekend on book tv, on c-span 2, saturday at 8:45 p.m. eastern, rachel botsman talks about the impact technology has had on trust in her book "who can you trust." >> is it making us smarter about who we trust, or is it encouraging us to place our trust in the wrong people and the wrong places? >> sunday at 4:45 p.m. amy goldstein talks about the closing of a general motors

assembly plant in wisconsin d z during the great recession. >> dislocated is a government term that means you've lost your job and there's not much likelihood it's going to come back. and that's what we call these people, dislocated workers. and i decided what i wanted to illustrate as i came to think of it, what choices people make when there's no good choices left. >> and at 7:30 on the connection between the brain and the world in his book "dawn of the new everything." for more of this week's schedule go to book tv.org. you're watching american history tv, 48 hours of programming on american history every weekend on c-span 3. follow us on twitter at c-span history for information on your schedule and to keep up with the latest