Don Wildman

Once the railroad comes out, it changes the whole story.

I guess you could go even before that is the barbed wire fence, you know, like these technological achievements or advances that absolutely change the landscape.

Never mind the function of these lands.

And we're not even talking about Native Americans and how that's complicating the situation as well.

But the railroad comes and it becomes its own sort of villain in a way, although of course it's not.

It certainly is portrayed that way in so many movies, isn't it?

Yeah, there's a couple anecdotes, historical anecdotes that fascinate me.

First of all, the I mean, talk about dividing the nation.

You really have the Northern Railroad, the Central Railroad and the Southern Railroad, and they kind of divide the country up that way.

Most people don't realize that's where those interstates come from.

You know, you can drive on Route 80 going across.

You can drive these major courses, intercourses there.

And they're all tracing that same old route that those original railroads were there and still are.

That's right.

The other thing that fascinated me, and I was just out in San Francisco talking to friends of mine who are living there now, and they are staring at Alcatraz.

And I said, you know, Alcatraz was this old...

You know, military brig, but it was the union's fear of losing the gold that was in the mint in San Francisco, which they couldn't get back east until the railroad came.

That caused the need for creating Alcatraz as a fort.

You know, that was the first impulse to do that.

When we come back, we'll discuss the major costs and consequences of this continental expansion across the West, the main drivers and the primary victims.