Margaret Conneely Collection > SERIES II: Collected Films (Amateur & Professional Films) > Subseries II: Collected Professional Films

Chicago Railroad Fair & Pageant

Transcript (Download)

There is a wilderness to be conquered.

The Indian knows that wilderness well.

The intricacy of its trails and its ways are a power and his understanding.

He travels far upon them.

In 1673, a group of French voyagers, Father Marquette and Joliet among them, reached the shore of Lake Michigan near the mouth of the Chicago River.

These are the advanced god of transport, penetrating far into the Indian country.

Heroically facing the unknown and the new, the white man is already pushing the frontier westward.

He is matching his strength with that of the Indian, and the contest across the continent is on.

Long before the stagecoach and the turnpike had ceased to be important factors in national and international competition, a new and radically different method of transportation appeared.

The use of steam as a propulsive power in transport is at hand.

A brave beginning, English -born Rocket is his name.

Lasting is his fame.

George Stevenson has built him.

Do you think that progress will be swayed by the tea kettle that this man has made? The Iron Horse? Precisely so.

Soon after the advent of the Rocket, the Camden and Amboy Railroad, and now a part of the Pennsylvania Railroad, reaching all the long way across New Jersey, imported this remarkable engine, the John Bull.

And this curious engine? This was the first practical locomotive ever to be built in America, and to go in regular service upon an American railroad.

They called him the best friend of Charleston.

He was built by the West Point Foundry Company in the city of New York in 1829, and sent by sailing ship to Charleston, there to enter the service of the South Carolina Railroad, later to become part of the Southern Railway System.

This DeWitt Clinton also was built at the West Point Foundry, from Albany to Schenectady.

The year is 1829, and this is the Tom Thumb, invented by Peter Cooper.

Mr.

Cooper has made this small engine himself, out of odds and ends.

Rifle barrels make good blues for his boiler.

It is an odd contrivance, but it works.

Peter Cooper will show the way.

What is this? Mr.

Stokes wages his horse -drawn coach can go faster than the Tom Thumb? The race is on.

Oh, the gray mare won.

This is the Atlantic, built in 1832.

He was the last of the upright boiler engines.

He went to work at once on the Baltimore and Ohio, and he was the first engine ever to enter the city of Washington.

The engine is running.

In the early 1840s, Chicago found it difficult to keep its head above the sun.

The smoke brings firemen rushing to the rescue.

The eager citizens strive madly to save their town from flames.

Oh, it's not a fire at all.

The smoke the citizens see is from the Baldwin -built locomotive, the Pioneer of the Galena -Chicago Union Railroad.

On November 20, 1848, the Pioneer ran ten miles out to the Des Plaines River and brought in a load of wheat.

Chicago as a railroad center is born.

It is now the middle of the century, 1849.

From the lately acquired Spanish province of California has come the whispering of a single word, gold, that has set the entire land aflame.

No longer is the Missouri the western limit of the nation's growth.

There is a new land far away, close to the rim of the western sea, and this new land is a land of gold.

The westward trek has now begun.

A slender rivulet of folks headed straight for the setting sun, a steady torrent has become.

Men, horses, wagons, coaches, in serried ranks, tread westward home and carry not.

The angels cry for me, let me hide my flabby feet.

Let the water under the morn from my loose and stony foes.

See our sweet love down the chute, wave our hearts and wave me through.

Now the year is 1859 and one of the most romantic adventures of transport in America has begun.

Here is a Wells Fargo coach.

Hundreds of these coaches traverse thousands of miles across open plain and rugged mountain country.

This is the Pony Express.

Night and day, ceaseless, tireless, ten miles to a horse, sixty miles to a rider, ten days St.

Joe to Sacramento.

The Wells Fargo coach, with its passengers in gold, starts another lap of its journey.

Not always does the gold get through.

The ready gun, the swinging fist, and the fastest horses are the law of the Overland Trail.

On this February day of 1861, Abraham Lincoln departs from his hometown of Springfield, Illinois, to take the highest gift within the power of the American people to bestow.

It is an hour of great danger.

No one, not in my situation, can appreciate my feeling of sadness at this party.

To this place and to the kindness of these people, I owe everything.

Here I have lived a quarter of a century and have passed from a young man to an old man.

Here my children have been born and one is buried.

I now leave, not knowing when or whether ever I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington.

Without the assistance of that divine being, whoever attended him, I cannot succeed.

With that assistance, I cannot fail.

Trusting in him, who can go with me and remain with you and be everywhere for good, let us confidently hope that all will yet be well.

To his care, commending you, as I hope in your prayers you will commend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell.

See, Lincoln walks alone.

No, not alone.

Faith leads and courage is his companion.

Glory, glory, hallelujah! Glory, glory, hallelujah! His truth is not dismal.

His truth is not dismal.

The wheels might have spun faster and traveled farther, and not the mighty axle of the nation cracked.

Blood was spilled at Bull Run, Fort Sumter, Fort Henry, Shiloh, Antietam, Fredericksburg.

The stench of massacre mingled with immortality at Gettysburg.

Vicksburg, Chickamauga, Kennesaw Mountain, Savannah, Chattanooga, Vicious Creek, Atlanta, and Appalachia.

And then, silent guns, broken men, and amended nation.

The wheels turned slowly, sadly.

Mr.

Lincoln returns.

After these bells, for here it is that life excels or death and reigns triumphal.

As early as 1856, the Rock Island Lions built the first bridge across the mighty Mississippi, opening rail commerce to the west.

Through the prairie lands of the Sioux and the Comanche, the railroad raced westward.

Countless thousands worked together to combine the greatness of east and west.

This is the day, this the hour, for which the world has waited.

The railroad, made 1869, at Promontory Point on the rim of the Great Salt Lake, from Omaha across the plains of Nebraska and Wyoming, and up over the summits of the Rockies, Dodge and Casement have molded the track of the Union Pacific, while the four giants of California have raced them with their Central Pacific toward this common meeting point.

Forging the last rail link across the continent, Governor Leland Stanford drives the spike of gold.

Now there is a double line of iron rails, all the way from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

Well named this railroad, Union Pacific, brought from human blood against terrific odds, it means indeed a union of east and west which will not be split asunder.

Now from eastern Kansas, the Santa Fe stretches its ribbons of steel south and west beyond the Mesa Verde to the shareville of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

For those traveling in this land of romance, there is more than improved eating conditions.

Serving the passengers of the old Santa Fe line are the famed Hargals, bringing a wealth of beauty, a bit of culture, and a lot of refreshing ideas to the southwestern frontier town.

But there are good and bad factions in this frontier town, and the rivalry is keen.

The southwest is being built by men of fortitude and initiative, whose essential toughness of mind and character is present in their descendants today.

The scene moves to the midwestern northlands, that's the Minnetonka.

What the lumberjacks can't carry, the Minnetonka can.

And on rails stretching ever forward, farmers, lumberjacks, immigrants, and pioneers of American industry move in.

This is James J.

Hill, empire builder, creator of the Great Northern Railroad System.

It is the heyday of the American farm.

As the century draws to a close, the railroads of the midwest become aware of the potentialities of the fertile lands they've been granted.

Among those embarking on elaborate campaigns to attract the immigrants from northwest Europe to these promising farmlands are the Milwaukee Road and the Burlington Lines.

Leaving the farms and villages of their rugged northlands, the peasants come to furl the plains of the upper Mississippi Valley to till the lowlands that border the Red River of the North into a bloom of prosperity their descendants are to enjoy.

These farmers, together with the immigrants, are destined to subdue the wilderness.

Identifier
F.2005-01-0051
Date Of Production
1950
Abstract
This educational film tells the history of carriage and locomotive transportation in the United States. The entire film is set outdoors near Chicago's lakefront and was shot during the 1948-1949 Chicago Railroad fair, which was organized to celebrate and commemorate 100 years of railroad history west of Chicago. A narrator provides facts while people in traditional costumes of Native Americans, settlers, and peasants act out the scenes of historical milestones. The film showcases antique trains, wagons, and carriages and explains their part in the development of the nation. Film is incomplete.
Log
00:00 - people dressed as Native Americans and French voyagers led by Father Marquette and Joliet reenact the story of settlers reaching Lake Michigan near mouth of Chicago River in 1673, Native Americans on horseback and white settlers smoke peace pipe and part ways against a concrete background overlooking the lake that serves as a stage 01:18 - text says over the next century America was born, settlers push west and develop roads and railways for transportation, narrator gives background on inventions introduces SA var antique steam engine trains as they developed over time, examples are driven across screen, operated by men in historical dress, train stops to board passengers 03:51 - a race is proposed between horse and buggy and the Tom Thumb steam engine, the horse wins 04:42 - comically try to board a short woman into train car 05:58 - firemen wheel in wagons with water and hoses to fight a fire, realize it is smoke from The Pioneer locomotive, brought in wheat to Chicago, Chicago as a railroad center is born 06:50 - 1849 many families in covered wagons set off West to gold rush, hardship on the way, a young boy dies, family mourns 08:55 - 1859 Wells Fargo coach invented, large coach pulled by 4 horses rides into scene 09:11 - Pony Express, couriers quickly switch horses and take off in relay 09:23 - coach carrying gold gets robbed by cowboys 10:04 - 1861 Abraham Lincoln gives sad speech departing Springfield, IL to become President, rides off in wagon 12:55 - wounded Civil War soldiers walk across screen, train rolls in with freed African American men walking beside it 14:91 - 1856 first bridge build across Mississippi River, Native Americans on horseback shoot at settlers, run off by soldiers 14:58 - 1869 trains traveling from opposite coasts met at Promontory Point, name railroad that runs length of east to west the Union Pacific, people celebrate 16:19 - Santa Fe Engine stops to drop off passengers where they find food, culture, choir sings to onlookers 17:17 - men on horseback come shooting into scene, dance with the women in pretty dresses 18:01-19:27 - Minnetonka carries lumber, peasants come to farm in Mississippi valley, footage ends abruptly
Run Time
0:20:50
Format
16mm
Extent
700 feet
Color
Color
Sound
Optical
Reel/Tape Number
1/1
Has Been Digitized?
Yes
Language Of Materials
English
Genre
Educational
Form
Short
Subject
Railroads
Transportation
Historical reenactments
Related Collections
Subseries II: Collected Professional Films

Related Places
North America ➜ United States ➜ Illinois ➜ Chicago

Additional Credits
Conneely, Margaret (is contributor)

 
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