With the rolling, with the rolling, with the rolling along.
One that brings all round the red -skinned to dear half -bad tell.
For that's the one that fights to wear out his mighty eyes.
For he made an ancient race from everyone here, from his own.
With the rolling, with the rolling along.
Wheels are rolling, the romance of travel and transport, and adventure in speed, growth and progress.
Today America is a nation on wheels, wheels that have rolled through wilderness and wasteland, leaving in their wake a thousand cities and ten thousand towns.
In 1673, a group of French voyagers, Father Marquette and Joliet among them, reach the shores of Lake Michigan near the mouth of the Chicago River.
These are the advanced guard of transport, penetrating far into the Indian country.
Heroically facing the unknown and the new, the white man is already pushing the frontier westward.
The Wilderness There is a wilderness to be conquered.
The Indian knows that wilderness well.
The intricacy of its trails and its waterways are part of his lore and his education.
The canoe, the pirope, the horse, the crude trevois, all these are part of his understanding.
Within the next century and a half, America as a nation is born.
Towns and cities flourish along the eastern seaboard.
Brave pioneers press farther into the wilderness.
Indian trails become pathways.
Pathways, roadways.
Among the most important of the early turnpikes was the National Road, often called the Cumberland Road, surveyed by George Washington in his young manhood.
The road was not begun until Thomas Jefferson's administration.
The National Road reached straight from the Potomac to Vandalia, the early capital of Illinois.
It was the first real inland transportation.
Before this, America had been a land without wheels, a vast territory in which no vehicle could roll.
An army of wagons and travelers of all descriptions begin to move westward.
Gay coaches of four and six horses, male coaches, peddlers, soldiers, showmen, beggars, all picturesque pilgrims on the nation's great highway.
The National Road did its share in bringing a blended era of national growth, which was spreading over the country.
Yes, the National Road was built by the people and for the people, and became a highway for the products and commerce of eastern states.
It was one of the great strands which bound the nation together in the early days.
Long before the stagecoach and turnpike had ceased to be important factors in national travel, a new and radically different method of transportation appeared.
The era of the National Road is succeeded by that of the railway.
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 had built him.
It was not long after the advent of the Rocket, one of England's earliest locomotives, before the early Camden and Amboy Railroad, reaching all the long way across New Jersey, imported this remarkable engine, the John Bull.
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 for the Mohawk and Hudson Railroad, the pioneer unit of the later New York Central System.
These curious coaches were made by a Mr.
Gould, master stage coach builder of the old city of Albany.
This Lafayette was the first of the American long -boiled locomotives.
The year is 1829.
This time we are on the tracks of the very early Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.
This elderly gentleman, who is now alighting from his carriage, is Charles Carroll, who is prominent in the development of early rail transportation.
Mr.
Carroll said when he turned the soil for the laying of the first stone of this railroad, I consider this among the most important acts of my life, second only to my signing of the Declaration of Independence.
Here comes a quaint little engine called the Tom Thumb.
And with it is Peter Cooper, the inventor of the Tom Thumb.
Mr.
Cooper has made this small engine out of odds and ends.
Rifle barrels make good flues for his boiler.
It is an odd contrivance, but it works.
Mr.
Stokes wagers his horse -drawn coach can go faster than the Tom Thumb.
The race is on.
Oh, the gray mare won.
But not for long.
This The Atlantic, built in 1832, was the last of the upright boiler engines.
He went to work at once on the Baltimore and Ohio, and was the first engine ever to enter the city of Washington.
Oh, we'll all go out to meet her when she comes.
We will kill the old red rooster, we will kill the old red rooster, and we'll all have chicken and dumplings when she comes.
In the early 1840s, Chicago found it difficult to keep its head above the swamps and mud that surrounded it.
Roads clutched at wagon wheels with black, tenacious fingers.
Coaches struggled along hub deep, churning the pikes into quagmires.
By 1848, however, plank roads began to run into Chicago like spokes into a hub.
Chicago's history takes shape, reflecting the dynamic personalities of its leaders.
Here in the center is William B.
Ogden, president of the Galena and Chicago Union, which is later to become the Chicago and Northwestern Railway System.
Alighting from the carriage are John Wentworth, eccentric politician, and Cyrus H.
McCormick, blacksmith inventor of the newfangled Reaper.
These men focused their attentions on Chicago, and Chicago becomes the focal point of the nation, the future metropolis of the Midwest.
["The Star -Spangled Banner"] ["Fire, Fire, Fire, Fire, Fire, Fire, Fire"] ["The Star -Spangled Banner"] The Uyghur citizens strive madly to save their town from flames.
Why, it's not a fire at all.
The smoke these people see is from the Baldwin -built locomotive, the pioneer of the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad, as it's primed for its second trip.
The wheels of the nation are beginning to whirl.
The pioneer, a secondhand engine, on November 20, 1848, ran 10 miles out to the Des Plaines River and hauled in a load of wheat.
Chicago, as a railroad center, is born.
["The Star -Spangled Banner"] 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 an 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 rigolette of folks headed straight for the setting sun, a steady torrent has become.
Men, horses, wagons, coaches, in serried ranks press westward home.
["The Star -Spangled Banner"] Let me hide my self in thee.
["The Star -Spangled Banner"] 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 of open plain and rugged mountain country, carrying at times more than two million dollars in gold in a single coach.
Oh, see these horsemen.
Yes, this is the Pony Express.
Night and day, day and night, ceaseless, tireless are these couriers, through wind and rain and blazing sun and bitter cold.
Ten miles to a horse, sixty miles to a rider, ten days St.
Joe de Sacramento.
The Wells Fargo coach with its passengers and gold starts another lap of its journey.
Not always does the gold get through.
The ready gun and the fastest horses are the law of the Oberland Trail.
["The Star -Spangled Banner"] 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.
My friends, no one, not in my situation, can appreciate my feeling of sadness at this parting.
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 who ever 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.
O, O, O, O, O, O, O, O, O, See, Lincoln walks alone.
No, not alone.
Faith leads and courage is his companion.
The wheels might have spun faster and traveled farther had not the mighty axle of the nation cracked.
Blood was spilled at Fort Sumter Bull Run, Fort Henry Shiloh, and Teton Fredericksburg.
The stench of massacre mingled with immortality at Gettysburg.
Vicksburg, Chickamauga, Kennesaw Mountain, Savannah, Chattanooga, Fishes Creek, Atlanta, and Appomattox.
And then silent guns, broken men, and a mended nation.
The wheels turned slowly, sadly.
The nation mourns its martyred leader.
Mr.
Lincoln returns.
O, O, O, O, Faith is bound for glory.
Faith is bound for glory.
Faith is bound for glory.
Faith is bound for glory.
Faith, faith, faith, faith.
Faith, faith, faith, faith.
Faith, faith, faith, faith.
In 1862, Congress had passed the bill making possible a transcontinental railroad.
This project of spanning brings us to the land of the cowboy.
As early as 1856, the Rock Island lines built the first bridge across the mighty Mississippi, opening rail commerce to the west.
Through the virgin prairie lands of the Sioux, the Kiowa, and Comanche, the railroad plotted its way westward.
Countless thousands worked together to combine the greatness of the east and the west.
As I was a -walkin' one morning, what made you right? By the compound you're all ridin' along.
His hands were back in his furs were as deep as, and as he approached he was singin' his song.
What's it high, I don't get along with no joke, you know that's why omelet will be a good home.
The golden, the gilded, the white omelet.
Unhappy, contented, and free.
A -giddy -day, way out to the slope, hey.
Oh, land of old, a -giddy -day.
This is the day, this the hour, for which the nation has waited these long years.
May the 10th, 1869, at Promontory Point, on the rim of the great Salt Lake.
The war is past, peace is erecting her own victory.
From Omaha, across the plains of Nebraska and Wyoming, Dodge and Pacement have molded the tracks of the Union Pacific.
Meanwhile, the gentlemen from California, with their Chinese and Mexican workmen, have raced then with their Central Pacific toward this common meeting point.
Now it is all but done.
Praise him, our creator, dear below.
Praise him, our holy, heavenly host.
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
Amen.
Governor Trittle of Nevada gives Governor Leland Stanford of California the silver mallet, with which he will drive the final spike made of Nevada gold that completes the rail link across the continent.
It is done.
Should all acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind.
Should all acquaintance be forgot and days of o 'erland gone.
Now there is a double line of iron rails all the way from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
Well named this railroad, Union Pacific, wrought from human blood against terrific odds.
It means indeed a union of East and West, which will not be split asunder.
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 campaigns to attract the immigrants from Northwest Europe are the Milwaukee Road and the Burlington Line.
These European immigrants came to furrow the plains of the Upper Mississippi Valley to till the lowlands that border the Red River into a bloom of prosperity.
From the farms and villages of their rugged Northland, they have brought the colorful ways of their people.
The American farmers welcome the newcomers who are gradually absorbed into the life of the community, the life of a growing America.
The old European traditions yield to the young and vigorous spirit of this new environment.
The great American melting pot is functioning.
The American farmers, together with the immigrants, are destined to subdue the wilderness, to deal single -handed with the earth and the elements.
They feel in a very real sense that they are laying the foundation of a great nation.
The scene now moves to the Midwestern Northland, handsome in their vastness, impressive in their strength.
These big wheels as they are known to the lumberjack brought logs from the timberlands to the rails of the Northern Pacific, the first of Northern transcontinental railroads.
From this point, the sturdy Minnetonka carried the logs to sawmills.
And on rails stretching ever farther forward, farmers, lumberjacks, immigrants, and leaders of American industry move in.
This is James J.
Hill, empire builder, creator of the Great Northern Railway System, a pioneer of lake and ocean transport.
That is one of the Red River oxcots which started Jim Hill on his way to fame and fortune.
J .J.
Hill, dreamer, visionary, stern and practical, he came upon the American scene as a man of destiny.
This is Chicago during the Gay 90s.
It's been nearly 25 years since the Chicago fire.
Mrs.
O 'Leary's cow is forgotten, and the horse is the hero of the era.
The horse car is arriving.
Sunday excursions behind Old Dobbin are all the rage.
And there is the cable car.
These people are also staying to see the fashion show later.
Here come the pedal pushers.
The style show is about to begin.
Here comes the famous 999, the fastest locomotive in the world, faster than anything else on wheels.
It is now the 20th century.
These Chicagoans have arrived by horse -drawn tally -ho to take their first ride in a horseless carriage.
The years have passed to the rhythm of chugging motors as American inventive genius is concentrated upon the automobile.
The names of Felden, Durier, Apperson, Haynes, Olds, Buick and Ford are on everyone's tongue.
Everyone that is except poor, gentle Dobbin, who still prefers sugar.
Gas, electricity and steam are competing for supremacy as the propulsive power in the early automobile.
From these small beginnings a new and giant industry indicative of a great nation's commercial progress is being born.
Even in this day of the horseless carriage, Old Dobbin finds a job to do.
It was inevitable that the automotive vehicle would come to the road of steel.
Today the diesel electric, offspring of the motor car and the iron horse, surpasses the power of its parents as an agent of transport.
It is 1934 and the diesel has graduated from freight to passenger service.
Nowhere today, from ocean to ocean, nowhere is there a frontier.
Nowhere today are there vast stretches of wasteland or wilderness.
The challenge of the horizon has been accepted.
Its promise has been fulfilled.
Modern transport has reached across a hemisphere to weld this land into a mighty nation.
For a full century, railroads have forged our destiny in war and in peace.
They have spanned a continent and united a nation.
The romance of transportation, the adventure of speed and progress is more than the history of America.
It is the lifeblood of the nation.
