Aerial.America.S05E01.Texas
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00:00If there's one thing Texans are known for, it's how they love to brag about their state.
00:11Patriotic and plain spoken, they're proud to be Americans, but maybe even prouder to
00:20be Texans.
00:25And always ready to tell you why.
00:28Who can blame them?
00:30They live in the biggest state in the lower 48, a land of amazing contrast and riches.
00:37From lush green forests, to shimmering towers of steel, to an ancient basin that holds treasure
00:46worth billions deep underground.
00:51In Texas, miles of pristine coastline curve right up to the horizon, and the sun bakes
00:57down on a bone-dry desert that only the bravest dare to cross, near one of the most heavily
01:05guarded border crossings in the world.
01:09It's a state that's experienced tragedy and victory up close, where an assassin's bullets
01:16shook the nation in a place called Dealey Plaza.
01:22And the bloody defeat of a group of Texan rebels at the Alamo inspired a famous battle
01:27cry that spurred others on to win the state its freedom.
01:33From colony, to republic, to state, the people of Texas have been standing up for their rights
01:41and bragging about it ever since, here in the Lone Star State.
02:27From a state that likes to brag about how big it is, Texas got off to a surprisingly
02:32small start in 1822, when an adventurous entrepreneur named Stephen F. Austin led a group of American
02:40families to this stretch of the Brazos River, and established the first legal American colony
02:46in what was then the Mexican state of Tejas.
02:52Austin has been casting a long shadow over Texas history ever since.
02:57Today, a monument to him, designed by sculptor David Attucks, stands tall over Angleton.
03:14Mexico welcomed the Americans with 4,400-acre land grants on which to build their new ranches.
03:22Thirty dollars and loyalty to Mexico was all they had to promise in return.
03:34But that quickly changed when Mexico began restricting the rights of the settlers.
03:41By the mid-1830s, tensions between the Americans and the Mexicans had reached a fever pitch.
03:48On March 2nd, 1836, 58 men from all across the region arrived here at a modest cabin
03:55on the Brazos.
03:58That little cabin is long gone, but this replica marks the historic site where the Republic
04:03of Texas was born, when the men inside signed the Texas Declaration of Independence from
04:11Mexico.
04:15A declaration that would fuel a war known as the Texas Revolution, which led to one
04:22of the most famous battles in American history, at a place Texans will always remember, the
04:30Alamo.
04:33This former Catholic mission is surrounded by downtown San Antonio, and is besieged today
04:38only by tourists.
04:40But in March of 1836, a band of almost 200 Texan rebels were barricaded inside the Alamo,
04:48including legendary frontiersmen William Travis, Davy Crockett, and Jim Bowie.
04:53Outside, they were surrounded by an army of more than 1,800 Mexicans under General Antonio
04:59López de Santa Anna, who was also the President of Mexico.
05:09Santa Anna ordered the Texans to surrender on pain of death, setting the stage for a
05:16tragedy that reached its final act on March 6th, when the Mexicans moved in.
05:25The outnumbered men in the Alamo fought heroically, but were quickly overwhelmed.
05:31Those who didn't die in battle were executed, just as Santa Anna had promised.
05:37Ever since that day, cries of, Remember the Alamo, have filled the Texas air.
05:46But the Texas Revolution wasn't over yet.
05:53Just outside modern-day Houston lies San Jacinto, the historic site where Texas' independence
05:59was finally won.
06:01Today, the Battle of San Jacinto monument marks the spot where, on April 21st, 1836,
06:08the rebel army got its revenge.
06:13Led by General Sam Houston, they too were outnumbered, but managed to outfox and outfight
06:19the Mexicans, and even capture Santa Anna himself.
06:23The Mexican President had no choice but to surrender, finally giving Texas its independence.
06:31The new Republic of Texas was its own country for almost ten years.
06:36Sam Houston, the hero of the revolution, was elected the Republic's first president.
06:42But no one could agree on where Texas officials should call their home.
06:48In 1839, a small town on the Colorado River named Waterloo was chosen, and renamed in
06:58Stephen F. Austin's honor.
07:02Today, it's a glimmering jewel in the Texas crown, home to the impressive Texas State
07:11Capitol.
07:14Foreign hostility with Mexico finally drove Texans to accept an offer to join the United
07:19States as the 28th state in 1845.
07:24But it wasn't until March 2nd, 1885, that the cornerstone was laid for the new Capitol,
07:30for a proud civic palace to honor America's largest state at the time, since Alaska wasn't
07:36yet part of the U.S.
07:39It was built on one of Austin's highest points, with a foundation of Texas limestone, walls
07:45of red Texas granite, and an imposing dome designed to be taller than the one in Washington
07:50D.C.
07:51So, Texans would have one more reason to brag, capped by a 16-foot statue of the goddess
07:56of liberty holding the Texas star.
08:01It cost almost $4 million to build, which would be more than $90 million today, a bill
08:08paid mostly in land instead of cash.
08:12When the building opened in 1888, Texans poured in to take a look, and have been bragging
08:17about how nice it turned out ever since.
08:21When legislators needed more room in the early 1990s, the project's architects left the original
08:27building untouched and buried their addition out back, and gave it an impressive light
08:33well that looks, from the air, like a mirror image of the Capitol Dome.
08:39Today, the Capitol still stands in Austin as a grand and dignified symbol of a proud
08:48state.
08:49But the city that surrounds it often has a very different vibe.
08:54In fact, some of the locals like to brag that it's downright weird, especially the blocks
09:00around historic 6th Street.
09:02In the 1960s, this was the heart of Austin's skid row.
09:06Then, in the 70s, a few daring Austinites began promoting live music in its dive bars.
09:146th Street became the center of a vital new music scene, inspired by the legacies of Texas
09:19musical greats like Buddy Holly, Roy Orbison, and Willie Nelson.
09:26Thanks in large part to students from another Austin landmark, the University of Texas.
09:31UT opened in 1883 with just one unfinished building and 221 students.
09:38Today, there are 52,000.
09:42Former students include Lady Bird Johnson, computer entrepreneur Michael Dell, singer
09:47Janice Joplin, and actors Owen Wilson and Matthew McConaughey.
09:56On fall Saturday afternoons, up to 100,000 fans crowd into Memorial Stadium to see the
10:01legendary Texas Longhorns play football and chant one of the shortest chants in college
10:07sports, Texas Fight.
10:11The Longhorns have given Texas football fans plenty to brag about over the years and given
10:15UT students plenty of great memories of campus life.
10:20But for many graduates in the late 1960s, their memories of UT were colored less by
10:25football and more by the horrific events of a single day in August, events that unfolded
10:33here on the campus' Central Plaza.
10:38Soaring above it, the 307-foot-high clock tower once served as an inspiring beacon for
10:44generations of students after it opened in 1937.
10:49But that changed on August 1, 1966.
10:54At roughly 11.48 a.m., a student walking across the plaza below suddenly cried out and fell
11:01to the ground.
11:04Her friend and a nearby physics professor fell next, all hit by bullets that seemed
11:10to come from nowhere.
11:14More followed, striking students and others across the campus and on a busy street nearby.
11:23Victims of sniper fire from an unhinged ex-Marine named Charles Whitman, who had barricaded
11:29himself on the tower's observation deck with an arsenal of weapons.
11:36Police and well-armed Austinites fired back.
11:40Some of the hundreds of bullet holes they left behind can still be seen in the tower's
11:43facade.
11:46Whitman took cover behind the parapet and continued firing through the water spouts.
11:51By the time the police finally managed to make it up to the observation deck and take
11:57him out, he'd shot 14 people dead and injured dozens more.
12:05Today visitors to the tower have to pass through a metal detector to make sure they're not
12:09carrying any guns, which makes the UT Tower one of a few places outside of an airport
12:15where Texans are forbidden to pack heat.
12:24Much of the land that's now present-day Texas was once part of colonial Mexico, which was
12:29also known as New Spain, and the only thing that stood in the way of travelers then was
12:35a river called the Rio Grande.
12:39Today the Texas border is one of the most secure in the world, especially here in El
12:46Paso.
12:47A team from U.S. Customs and Border Protection keeps an eye out for suspicious activity below.
12:59The international crossing he's guarding is the second busiest in the U.S., even though
13:04it's one of the most remote.
13:09From the capital in Austin, it lies 600 miles to the west in the barren desert along the
13:14Rio Grande River.
13:16Here, the U.S.-Mexico border follows the route of the river and is home to the city of El
13:22Paso.
13:27Spanish explorers named the area El Paso del Norte in the 16th century after a convenient
13:33mountain pass on the way to the north.
13:38For centuries, the town along the river catered to the north-south traffic that came in the
13:42explorer's wake.
13:45Then, the Mexican-American War and a new border split the community in two.
13:53The American side was reborn as El Paso, the Mexican as Juarez.
13:59With not much around them, both towns were highly dependent on the other.
14:04But in recent years, after drug wars turned Juarez into one of the world's murder capitals,
14:09U.S. Customs and Border Protection ramped up its efforts to keep the troubles from spilling
14:13over to the American side.
14:16The trick was to do it without halting the cross-border traffic that is vital to both
14:21countries' economies.
14:24A mix of old-fashioned vigilance, walls, high-tech tools, canine patrols, and helicopters
14:30get the job done, leaving no inch of the border that winds along the Rio Grande here in El
14:38Paso unsecured.
14:41But that's not the case everywhere on the Texas-Mexico border.
14:47Downriver from El Paso, the Rio Grande wanders alone through a wild desert landscape with
14:53no one to stand guard, and no walls around it but the steep sides of beautiful Santa
14:59Elena Canyon.
15:02Those who try to cross in remote areas like this may have less of a chance of encountering
15:06border agents than in El Paso, but all too many meet their end from snakebite, exposure,
15:13or bandits instead.
15:18That's why many attempt to cross here in El Paso, even though they face a higher chance
15:23of getting caught, risking everything in search of a better life, just as folks have been
15:30doing here in Texas from the very start.
15:35In the 1500s, Spanish conquistadors managed to cross the Rio Grande in their search for
15:43cities of gold.
15:45Over the next two centuries, they conquered this arid land in the name of their king and
15:55built a string of beautiful missions to lure its native people to their god.
16:01Some of these settlements went on to become the Texas towns and cities we know today.
16:07That's how modern San Antonio got its start.
16:14Next to the San Jose y San Miguel de Aguayo mission, which lies just a stone's throw from
16:19downtown.
16:20In 1720, this mission was little more than a tiny compound, but over the next 50 years,
16:27the Franciscans built this imposing church with its soaring bell tower and Baroque entryway.
16:36It was soon famous across the New World as the queen of the missions.
16:42From 1749 to 1821, the nearby settlement of San Antonio gradually developed into a
16:48vital colonial crossroads.
16:51Today, almost 200 years later, the city's unique mix of Latin and Anglo culture still
16:57gives it a Tex-Mex flavor all its own.
17:03But San Antonio wouldn't be what it is today without the vision of a local architect named
17:08Robert Hudman.
17:09In the 1920s, after the San Antonio River flooded downtown, the city decided to divert
17:15the river and build a covered storm channel through town instead.
17:18But Hudman had a different idea, to convert that channel into a beautifully landscaped
17:24refuge from the Texas heat.
17:29Today, this two-and-a-half-mile stretch is known as the Riverwalk.
17:43But there's one important place in town that the Riverwalk doesn't reach.
17:49The home of the NBA's San Antonio Spurs.
17:54When the Spurs arrived here in 1973, the people of San Antonio finally had a Major League
17:59Sports team to call their own.
18:03But it took almost three decades for the team to get its own stadium.
18:07In 1999, the Spurs' first victory in the NBA Championships finally inspired San Antonio
18:14to give them a home.
18:16After it opened in 2002, the team rewarded San Antonio with three more NBA titles in
18:222003, 2005, and 2007.
18:27Leaving their fans plenty to cheer about, in a surprisingly cosmopolitan city that was
18:34once a remote Spanish outpost.
18:38There's a place in Texas where the American West seems to begin, a place with a vast monotonous
18:54prairie that sweeps in from the east, comes to a sudden end at the edge of a deep chasm.
19:12But mysterious towers, called hoodoos, stand guard at the entry to a strange land.
19:25This is Palo Duro Canyon.
19:27For 90 million years, the prairie dogtown fork of the Red River and the Texas weather
19:35have worked together to carve this canyon from the prairie soil, exposing colorful bands
19:40of sedimentary rock deposited here over 240 million years ago, leaving behind a technicolor
19:52landscape that seems custom-made to serve as the backdrop to a Hollywood Western.
20:00Beyond Palo Duro Canyon, the west of legend and lore stretches across thousands of square
20:06miles of Texas, and all the way back to frontier days, days of guns and blood, when American
20:14settlers began pouring into the new state and driving the Cherokee, Comanche, Caddo,
20:20and other native people who lived here off their ancient lands.
20:25When these tribes fought back, the U.S. Cavalry sent some unusual troops to help the settlers
20:30out.
20:31They came here to Fort Davis in far west Texas.
20:36The fort was founded in 1854, but was abandoned during the Civil War.
20:42Native Americans later used the wood of its buildings for fuel.
20:46But after the Civil War, in 1867, the U.S. Cavalry returned and began rebuilding the
20:52fort with new officer's quarters, a new hospital, and new barracks to house a new type of soldier.
21:02African-American volunteers the Indians called the Buffalo Soldiers.
21:07For 20 years, the Buffalo Soldiers at Fort Davis blazed trails for African-Americans
21:13as the U.S. Army's first peacetime regiments of black troops.
21:17They played a key role in America's western expansion by helping to build the roads settlers
21:23needed and protecting them from Indian attacks.
21:28By the late 1880s, the settlers had pushed the Indians all the way out.
21:35Fort Davis was abandoned again, when the black soldiers were sent on, leaving behind the
21:40new Texas they had helped to create, a Texas of ranchers, cattle, and cowboys that would
21:49become famous around the world.
21:52Though the cowboys weren't the first to ranch here.
21:59The Texas-style ranches we know today got their start as Spanish or Mexican ranches
22:04before the American Revolution.
22:09Like this one, King Ranch, the largest in Texas.
22:13In 1853, a New York steamboat pilot named Richard King and his partner Gideon K. Lewis
22:19bought this ranch on an old Spanish land grant and combined it with other property.
22:26Today it's still going strong and still owned by King's heirs.
22:32At its heart stands the big house.
22:35With strutting peacocks, teak floors, and Tiffany furnishings, this mansion is the stuff
22:40of Texas legend.
22:42Even though almost no one except the family is allowed inside.
22:46Outside, the cowboys known as Quineños, or the King's men, live in more humble quarters.
22:55They manage more than 50,000 head of cattle and help generate hundreds of millions of
22:59dollars in revenue for the ranch, which now also makes money by putting its name on branded
23:04shotguns and pickup trucks.
23:08Creating a revenue stream Richard King could never have imagined.
23:13Back then, to make money from their cattle, ranchers like King had to round them up and
23:17drive them hundreds of miles north on horseback.
23:24They followed a series of dirt tracks, which were together known as the Chisholm Trail,
23:30that started around San Antonio, headed up through Oklahoma, and all the way to the towns
23:35of Ellsworth and Abilene in Kansas, where trains were ready to transport the cattle
23:40to slaughterhouses in the big cities like Chicago and San Francisco.
23:48As the cattle drives headed north, Texas businessmen here in Waco found a way to cash in.
23:55They built a bridge over the Brassus River to make it easy for the cows and cowboys to
23:59cross, and then charged a toll for every man and every cow.
24:06When it opened in 1870, it was the longest suspension bridge west of the Mississippi.
24:13It would earn the men who built it $25,000 a year in tolls, a phenomenal amount in those
24:18days, and spark a boom in Waco by bringing the cattle drives right through town.
24:27This appealing little city, home to Baylor University, the birthplace of Dr. Pepper,
24:32and the Texas Rangers Museum, has been riding out booms and busts ever since.
24:42Texans no longer have to drive their cattle to Kansas, but being a cowboy is still a way
24:47of life across the Lone Star State, as it is here at the 43,000-acre Circle Bar Ranch
24:56outside Truscan.
25:03Today cowboys from nearby ranches are helping Circle Bar's Colton Daniel gather his cattle.
25:09They've been on horseback since the crack of dawn, and will be riding the range right
25:13up until the sun goes down.
25:18Colton's family has been ranching in Texas since the 1800s, but a lot has changed since
25:25then.
25:26These days, Colton uses his cell phone to coordinate a hunt for missing calves.
25:37But even with newfangled gadgets, it still takes hard work to be a Texas cowboy.
25:43Work that's created the iconic image of the Texan in his stetson, riding on the range.
25:56And no one did more to make the image of the Texan in his cowboy hat famous around the
26:03world than a Hill Country rancher, who also happened to be the leader of the free world,
26:10President Lyndon Baines Johnson.
26:15Born and bred in central Texas, Johnson called this ranch along the Pedernales River, west
26:20of Austin, home.
26:24Just weeks after assuming office, Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird, charmed the world
26:29and West German Chancellor Ludwig Erhard by holding their first state dinner here at their
26:33ranch and turning it into a state barbecue.
26:40They often jetted in to a specially built runway.
26:43On this downsized version of Air Force One, press reports of their comings and goings
26:48kept the Texas ranch lifestyle in the global spotlight.
26:55And led many to assume the ranch was Johnson's childhood home.
26:58But LBJ actually grew up nearby, in this modest home, as a member of a less successful branch
27:05of the family that gave nearby Johnson City its name.
27:12The son of a local politician who failed a re-election bid, he went to school in this
27:17one-room schoolhouse and vowed to make good where his daddy had not.
27:23When LBJ purchased this ranch from his aunt in 1951, it was proof he had made the grade.
27:28Today, it is preserved much as he and Lady Bird left it, including the graveyard, where
27:37they are buried together in their beloved Texas soil.
27:44But beyond its fences, the state they knew so well, the rural Texas of backroads and
27:49small towns, of cowboys and cattle, has changed in ways they could never have imagined.
27:57When the sun rises over western Texas, it can seem like another world, a prehistoric
28:08land where ancient creatures once reigned.
28:14Texas has some of the most desolate landscape in the lower 48, including miles of forbidding
28:22desert on its western fringe.
28:25But surprisingly, the Lone Star State is not as lonely as it might first seem.
28:33In fact, there are more people per square mile in Texas than in more than 20 other states,
28:40including Alabama, Vermont, and Nevada.
28:43And even in the most remote places, Texans have managed to create new life where there
28:51was none before.
28:54On an ancient bone-dry salt bed, alfalfa manages to thrive thanks to a hidden supply of water
29:01pumped from an aquifer, one of these giant pivot-point irrigation circles.
29:06But there are other, even stranger, signs of life in this seemingly barren Texas landscape.
29:15Like this, a city storefront in the middle of nowhere.
29:22This lonely Prada boutique isn't a mirage, but it's also not a real store.
29:29It's a work of art by Berlin-based artists Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Drexel.
29:35They call it pop architectural land art, and plan to let it sit here on this remote stretch
29:41of U.S. Highway 90 and decay until it turns to dust in a sort of slow-motion critique
29:50of America's consumerist culture.
29:55Artists from around the world may be finding inspiration in the barren West Texas desert,
29:59but Texans themselves flock to much cooler landscapes whenever they can.
30:08Twenty-five percent of all Texans live within a short drive from one of the longest coastlines
30:12in America, 367 miles in all, stretching from Mexico to Louisiana.
30:22But the state's most stunning beaches aren't actually on the coast.
30:27They're on a series of barrier islands just offshore, mile after mile of dunes, surf,
30:34and sand.
30:35The most popular by far is Padre Island National Seashore, the longest undeveloped barrier
30:42island in the world.
30:48Texans come here to escape the pressures of modern life and enjoy a wild side of Texas.
31:00Behind these dunes, marshes and lagoons teem with animal and plant life, including some
31:07endangered species.
31:09But these islands are vital to humans, too.
31:14When hurricanes rage across the Gulf, these long, narrow islands absorb the brunt of the
31:18storm, protecting the coastal towns that lie on the Texas mainland.
31:28Which is why the men who founded Galveston on one of the islands in the 1830s were taking
31:33a gamble from the start.
31:35They were betting its oceanfront location would turn their new city into a thriving
31:40And for a while, their risky wagers seemed to pay off.
31:45The new port city boomed.
31:48Elegant homes soon lined Galveston's streets, like Ashton Villa, built by New York hardware
31:54merchant James Morrow Brown, the first brick house in Texas.
32:00Its wrought iron veranda is said to have been shipped in from Philadelphia.
32:05The new veranda earned the house a special place in the history books on June 19, 1865,
32:12when Union General Gordon Granger stepped out on the balcony and read to a crowd below
32:17the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing the slaves.
32:21Blacks in Texas and across the country have been celebrating June 19, or Juneteenth, as
32:27a day of liberation ever since.
32:31By the 1880s, Galveston had become the biggest city in Texas, and one of the wealthiest in
32:37the nation, thanks to its bustling cotton trade.
32:40Its impressive architecture stands today as a proud symbol of that self-confident time.
32:46But pride, as they say, comes before a fall.
32:50On September 8, 1900, one of the deadliest hurricanes in U.S. history, even more devastating
32:56than Katrina, slammed into this island city head-on, with winds of more than 120 miles
33:02per hour.
33:04It destroyed a third of Galveston's buildings, and killed close to 8,000 people.
33:16Many believed Galveston was finished, but even though the city fathers erected a 17-foot
33:21seawall to protect the city from future storms, Galveston's golden age never returned.
33:29Thanks mostly to an ambitious neighbor to the north, a growing city named Houston.
33:37Houston was founded in 1836 by John and Augustus Allen, who named it for Sam Houston, the first
33:45president of the new Republic of Texas, which had just won its independence.
33:51The two brothers bragged its location, on the shores of Buffalo Bayou, north of Galveston,
33:56would make it the greatest port in Texas.
34:00But it wasn't until 1913, when the bayou was finally dredged to create the Houston Shipping
34:06Channel, that their claims proved true.
34:10The channel brought ocean-going vessels inland to Houston's new ports, and turned Galveston
34:15into a backwater.
34:17Today, billions of dollars of crude pass through this waterway.
34:22To make room for ever-larger cargo ships and tankers, the Fred Hartman Bridge was constructed
34:28in 1995, with roadways suspended 178 feet in the air.
34:37A new Texas landmark, the bridge guards the entrance to the fourth-largest city in the
34:42U.S., the gleaming modern metropolis of Houston, known as the energy capital of the world.
34:57And home to another jewel in the Lone Star State's crown, NASA's Lyndon B. Johnson Space
35:04Center.
35:07Since 1964, most NASA space missions have been guided from these control rooms, including
35:13the Apollo 13 flight in 1970 that made, Houston, we've had a problem, a catchphrase around
35:20the world.
35:23The cool-headed NASA staff helped prevent disaster on that famous flight, proving that
35:28years of training and preparation pay off, just as they do when disaster erupts back
35:34here on the ground.
35:35As a center of the world's petrochemical industry, Texas is home to thousands of potentially
35:43volatile sites.
35:46Just outside Houston stands the largest refinery in the U.S., run by ExxonMobil.
35:53Over 4,000 people work in its 2,500-acre web of pipes and structures, refining more
35:58than 550,000 barrels of oil a day.
36:04It's one of hundreds of large industrial sites all across the state.
36:10One accidental leak or spark, and industrial facilities like these can erupt in balls of
36:15flame.
36:16That's what happened at a fertilizer plant on April 17, 2013, in the town of West Texas.
36:23Two hundred people were injured, 15 were killed, including 11 firefighters and first responders.
36:34Today, a few of their brethren have come here, to the Brayton Fire Training Field outside
36:42College Station, to get the skills and training they need to avoid meeting the same fate.
36:50Brayton opened in 1960 as part of the Texas A&M University Fire School, and added this
36:55$70 million annex called Disaster City in 1998.
37:03Crashed planes, overturned tankers, train wrecks, Disaster City has them all, plus a
37:12wide range of mocked-up industrial sites that can combust on command.
37:19These simulated catastrophes are designed to prepare teams of firefighters and first
37:23responders from Texas, the U.S., and around the world to face the real thing.
37:32But there was one giant explosion in Texas in 1901 that no one was quite prepared for,
37:38an eruption that would lead to the biggest boom in Texas history, and one that continues
37:43to this day.
37:44It happened just outside Beaumont, near the Texas border with Louisiana, when an exploratory
37:51oil well called Spindletop exploded in a gusher 100 feet high.
37:57Today, this recreated Spindletop uses a gusher of water to give a sense of what it was like.
38:04By the time the well was finally capped, nine days later, it was standing in a vast pool
38:09of oil, and a new Texas industry had been born.
38:18No place in Texas was more transformed by that first oil boom than the town of Kilgore,
38:23which sat right on top of one of the world's great oil reserves.
38:30Within weeks, its 500 residents had lots of new neighbors, oil derricks.
38:40Almost 1,200 derricks like these started popping up downtown, around an area that Texans started
38:46calling the world's richest acre.
38:53One well was even drilled through the elegant terrazzo floor of the bank it replaced.
39:00And another sprouted right in what's now Kilgore High School's front yard.
39:07Kilgore's major oil boom lasted less than 30 years.
39:10By the 1960s, most of the oil had been pumped out.
39:17By then, Texans had gone looking for more oil to exploit, and found it far to the west
39:22of Kilgore.
39:26It's a landscape unlike any other in the U.S., millions of acres of former desert transformed
39:32by the search for a treasure that lies deep underground, in a place known as the Permian
39:38Basin.
39:40Here pump jacks stretch to the horizon and work 24-7 to pump oil and natural gas to the
39:45surface.
39:51You can dig a well just about anywhere here, and it's bound to strike gold.
39:58That's because this 75,000 square mile basin was once the floor of a prehistoric sea whose
40:05animal and plant life created vast reserves of petroleum over millions of years.
40:12First exploited in the 1920s, up to 40 billion barrels of oil have been pumped from the ground
40:18here since commercial production began.
40:20A hidden labyrinth of underground pipelines carry the crude to market.
40:26Sometimes old pipelines pop to the surface, as they do here in the Monaghan Sandhills
40:34State Park, evidence of America's complex web of buried oil infrastructure that most
40:41of us never see.
40:44The first oil boom in the Permian went bust in the 1980s, thanks to a glut of oil on the
40:49global market.
40:52By 2010, the boom times were back, thanks in large part to new, often controversial
40:58hydraulic fracturing techniques that allow energy companies to re-drill these fields
41:03all over again and create billions of dollars of revenue from a region many had written
41:10off.
41:11It was during the area's first boom that an oilman named George Bush Sr. moved with his
41:21wife Barbara to the town of Midland.
41:24In this modest house, they raised their sons, Jeb and George W. It was oil from the Permian
41:30Basin that made Bush a millionaire, before he ran for political office.
41:37Their former home is now a museum.
41:43On fall Fridays, many of the region's oil workers and their families head to nearby
41:47Odessa, home to Ratliff Stadium and its Permian Panthers.
41:55In West Texas, high school football is like a state religion that holds its services on
42:00Friday nights.
42:01And for many here, Ratliff Stadium is the Vatican.
42:07Up to 18,000 fans show up to cheer the Panthers on.
42:12They aren't the only ones who've come calling.
42:14Hollywood has too.
42:16First, the team inspired a best-selling book about the 1988 season.
42:21Then, the book inspired a hit movie in 2004 and an award-winning TV series in 2006.
42:29Both the book and the movie featured kids from families that never got rich in the region's
42:33oil booms, perhaps because those who did often left West Texas behind, heading east to find
42:41a place where they could spend their new money in style, Dallas.
42:48Big D, as it's also known, has been famous for its flashy millionaires ever since.
42:53Known around the world as a town where sass and cash go together, as they do here at Dallas
42:59Cowboys Stadium, in a really big way.
43:04Billionaire team owner Jerry Jones likes to brag that the $1.2 billion stadium is the
43:09right size for Texas, at 3 million square feet, with a massive retractable roof and
43:16120-foot-high end zone doors that are the largest operable glass doors in the world.
43:24When it opened, critics sniffed that Jones had gone too far, but many Dallas fans think
43:29his flashy Texas-sized stadium is just grand, though they'd probably like it even better
43:36if it wasn't actually in Arlington, a 20-mile drive to the west.
43:43Still, the stadium's not the only famous symbol of Dallas that isn't actually in town.
43:50One of the most notorious lies 30 miles to the north, in a place called Allen, but still
43:56says Dallas to the world.
44:00From 1978 to 1991, this house stood in for South Fork, home to the Ewings, the feuding
44:06fictional family on the hit nighttime soap opera, Dallas.
44:11For 357 episodes, the Ewings schemed, deceived, lusted, and murdered here, acting out a fantasy
44:20of Texas millionaire greed and bad behavior that fans seem to accept as an accurate portrait
44:25of life among the Dallas elite, even though most of the episodes were filmed in Los Angeles.
44:34In the end, even folks in Dallas came to love the show, and embraced the image of millionaires
44:39gone wild it broadcast to the world, hoping, perhaps, that it might eclipse another, darker
44:47image of Dallas, an image created during one of the darkest chapters in American history.
45:00On Friday, November 22nd, 1963, at 1140 a.m. Central Standard Time, Air Force One set down
45:07here at Dallas Love Field, with President John F. Kennedy and his wife Jackie on board.
45:18Some of JFK's advisors had warned them not to come.
45:21They said the liberal Kennedy was hated in conservative Dallas, and wouldn't be safe.
45:27But Kennedy was sure he could win Dallas over, with the help of his charming wife.
45:36Fifteen minutes after their plane touched down, they were in a motorcade on their way
45:40to the Dallas trademark for a fence-mending lunch with local Democrats, along a winding
45:46route that brought the motorcade straight down Main Street, over to Elm Street, and
45:51here to Dealey Plaza, in front of the Texas School Book Depository building, at 1229 p.m.
46:02One minute later, as the President's slow-moving convertible limo reached the spot marked today
46:06by a small white X in the roadway, shots rang out.
46:16Kennedy and fellow passenger, Texas Governor John Connolly, were both hit.
46:22Within seconds, their blood-spattered car was speeding west on Elm, and on to the Stemmins
46:28Freeway.
46:31As it turned to race north, doctors at nearby Parkland Hospital learned that the badly injured
46:36Kennedy was on his way.
46:40Minutes later, the President's limo was at Parkland's emergency room door.
46:45Shocked Americans quickly learned that their charismatic President had been shot.
46:54Then at 1.36 p.m., they heard the tragic news.
46:58The President was dead.
47:01Forty minutes later, over the protests of the Dallas Medical Examiner and the doctors,
47:05and in violation of Texas state law, Secret Service agents removed his body and returned
47:11it to Air Force One.
47:14At 2.47 p.m., with JFK's casket and a new President on board, the jet took off again
47:21from Love Field.
47:22It had been on the ground for just over three hours.
47:27By then, Lee Harvey Oswald, the young Texan officials would blame for the crime, was already
47:32in custody for killing a cop.
47:34By the next day, he had been charged with Kennedy's murder.
47:40Oswald's own murder, just two days later, kept the world from hearing what he had to
47:44say in his own defense.
47:47Conspiracy theorists have been arguing about what really happened that tragic day in Dealey
47:51Plaza ever since.
47:55The Dallasites were certain the assassination would stain their city forever, no matter
48:00who was to blame.
48:04In their grief, they hired noted architect Philip Johnson to build a memorial to the
48:09fallen President.
48:12He responded with this simple yet eloquent room, walled off from the city but open to
48:18the Texas sky, a solemn space to pause and remember a great man, and a tragic day neither
48:26Texas nor America will ever forget.
48:36The truth about what happened that day in Dallas on November 22, 1963, may never be
48:41known, but that hasn't kept curious Texans from finding other mysteries to solve, even
48:48if it requires a journey to a remote corner of the Lone Star State.
48:54High on this West Texas mountain stands a powerful modern tool for unlocking the secrets
48:59of the universe.
49:02This is the Hobby-Eberly Telescope, part of the University of Texas' McDonnell Observatory.
49:10This 433-inch mirror is one of the largest in the world.
49:18It uses spectroscopy, the decoding of light, to analyze the properties of stars, galaxies,
49:24and all the vast spaces in between.
49:30It made its first major discovery in 1999, when it revealed the existence of a quasar
49:35so far away that the light we see from it today began traveling toward Earth 10 billion
49:42years ago.
49:47Since then, the telescope has been used to find planets around distant stars, track supernovas,
49:54measure the mass of vast black holes, and seek the answer to why gravity exists.
50:05And questions, getting big answers on top of this windy West Texas peak, thanks to a
50:11high-tech marvel that's given Texans one more reason to feel proud.
50:20And one more reason to brag about their urban, rural, friendly, rugged, high-tech, old-fashioned,
50:34truly great Lone Star State.