Episodes
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One Sky Above Us
S1996 E9 - 1h 2m
As the 20th century neared, Americans celebrated with the World Columbian Exposition, where they were told that the frontier had closed – symbolized by one state proudly displaying an entire heard of buffalo – stuffed. But in the real West, for every frontier story that ended, another one began.
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Ghost Dance
S1996 E8 - 58m 38s
As settlers race to claim tribal lands, Native Americans take up the Ghost Dance, trusting in its power to restore a lost way of life until their hopes are crushed at Wounded Knee. The new century marks a new era in the West, an age of aqueducts and smelters. But the West remains what it has always been, a world waiting for a dream.
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The Geography of Hope
S1996 E7 - 1h 24m
Newcomers arrive by the millions, bringing a new spirit of conformity to the West. Indian children are taught to forsake their heritage, Mormons are told to abandon a tenet of their faith, and new laws deny Chinese and Mexican Americans a place in society. Yet the legend of the “Wild West” lives on, thanks to the greatest showman of the age.
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Fight No More Forever
S1996 E6 - 1h 25m
The federal government tightens its grip on the West, but three bold spirits remain defiant -- Sitting Bull, who prophesies his people's greatest victory but cannot prevent their ultimate defeat; Brigham Young, who must sacrifice a spiritual son to save his church; and Chief Joseph, who triumphs in defeat as an indomitable voice of conscience for the West.
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The Grandest Enterprise Under God
S1996 E5 - 1h 24m
A triumph of the human spirit, the transcontinental railroad opens a new era in the West, carrying homesteaders onto the prairies, bringing cowboys up the cattle trail from Texas, helping give women the vote in Utah and sending buffalo hunters onto the plains, where they drive a symbol of the West -- and a way of life -- to the brink of extinction.
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Death Runs Riot
S1996 E4 - 1h 24m
Civil war comes early to the West. In “Bleeding Kansas,” abolitionists battle for free soil. In Utah, federal troops march against Mormon polygamy. And along the Rio Grande, oppressed Mexican Americans rebel. The war between North and South unleashes brute savagery in the West, and leaves behind an army prepared for total war against the native peoples of the plains.
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Speck of the Future
S1996 E3 - 1h 24m
The Gold Rush brings the whole world to the West, as 49ers from Asia, South America and the eastern states scramble for “a share of the rocks,” littering the hills with mining towns and creating the West’s first metropolis. But in the push to strike it rich, many are violently pushed aside.
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Empire Upon the Trails
S1996 E2 - 1h 24m
Americans head west along many pathways -- following the fur trade into the mountains, fighting for self-determination in Texas, seeking religious freedom in Utah or a better life along the Oregon Trail. But whatever direction they travel, they move closer with every step to a “Manifest Destiny” that will make the West their own.
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The People
S1996 E1 - 1h 22m
The West begins as the whole world to the people who live there. It becomes a New World when Europeans arrive, a world shaken by incompatible visions. And almost three centuries later, when Lewis and Clark venture west to find a Northwest Passage, this world becomes the testing-ground for a young nation's continent-spanning dream.
Extras + Features
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The Role of Horses
4m 51s
Horses were brought to the West by the Spanish — the utilization of horses changed the way of life for Native American people forever, as it allowed them to conquer their greatest enemy: distance.
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Extraordinary Landscape
3m 42s
The West stretches from the Mississippi to the Pacific Ocean, from the Northern Plains to the Rio Grande — more than 2 million square miles of the most extraordinary landscape on earth. Its terrain has always beckoned and repelled.
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Exploring The West
3m 3s
Spanish, British, French, Chinese, and Russian explorers came to the West from every point of the compass. Native Americans, its original inhabitants, have lived there for so long that their stories of creation linked them to the land itself.
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