Aerial.America.S06E06.Missouri
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00:00You never know what you'll discover in Missouri from the air, when you race across the waters
00:08of its big muddy, peer down on fields that look like giant works of art from high above,
00:15and soar down the Mississippi Flyway with one of the most graceful creatures in the
00:20world.
00:21But the peaceful beauty of Missouri can be deceiving.
00:25It was here where the deadliest twister in U.S. history devastated an entire city in
00:31seconds, where massive earthquakes terrified settlers into thinking that the world was
00:35coming to an end, and where a police encounter ended in tragedy and sparked protests across
00:41the nation.
00:42But it was also in Missouri that a young Mark Twain turned memories of life on the Mississippi
00:48into the stories that made him a literary legend, and where a slave's pursuit of freedom
00:54ended with a shocking verdict that helped trigger the Civil War.
00:58Missouri is a state anchored by two great cities, St. Louis in the east, and Kansas
01:04City in the west, where rival home state teams faced off in Game 7 of the World Series.
01:11A talented animator first came up with the idea for a mouse named Mickey, and a rebel
01:18spirit earned it the nickname, Paris of the Plains.
01:23This is the colorful world of the Show-Me State, Missouri.
01:53One of Missouri's greatest natural treasures is the Ozarks, especially in the fall, when
02:12these green mountains are transformed into a blanket of red, orange, and gold.
02:20The Ozarks aren't your typical mountains.
02:22In fact, some geologists don't actually consider them to be mountains at all.
02:29That's because they weren't created by catastrophic events like volcanoes, or from tectonic plates
02:34clashing deep below.
02:38Missouri's Ozarks were created by erosion instead.
02:44Hundreds of millions of years ago, when this region was still covered by the sea, a giant
02:49area of what's now Missouri was slowly pushed upwards into a towering plateau.
02:54Then, over millions of years, water from rain and snow began eating away at the land, gradually
03:02creating the valleys and peaks that we call the Ozarks today.
03:08During that process of erosion, great globs of rock emerged from the earth.
03:14Nature has placed some of these giant boulders on display here, at a place called Elephant
03:19Rock State Park.
03:22These towering granite forms are thought to be more than a billion years old.
03:28They were named Elephant Rocks since they stand in a line, like a row of circus elephants.
03:34The largest is known as Dumbo, and is 27 feet tall.
03:41The scale of these massive boulders can be hard to grasp from the air, until you see
03:47them next to the visitors who come to be awed by Missouri's rich geological past.
03:56But there's another awe-inspiring form in Missouri, one that's made St. Louis one of
04:02the most easily recognized cities in the world, its stunning Gateway Arch.
04:10Take one glance at the arch on the banks of the Mississippi River, and everyone knows
04:15this is St. Louis.
04:19More than half a century after it was built, it remains one of the nation's great engineering
04:25marvels.
04:28It was born from economic chaos.
04:32In the 1930s, during the Depression, unemployment rates in St. Louis were high, so city officials
04:39started looking for ways for St. Louis to get its hands on some of the federal cash
04:44being handed out under the New Deal.
04:47They managed to convince President Roosevelt and New Deal officials to fund a new riverfront
04:52park and memorial to President Thomas Jefferson, and his leading role in America's westward
04:58expansion.
04:59St. Louis then launched a design competition for a new memorial on the site.
05:05The winner was a Finnish-American architect and designer named Eero Saarinen.
05:11His monumental arch seemed the perfect symbol of the opening up of the West and a way to
05:16frame the growing city of St. Louis.
05:19It took 900 tons of stainless steel to build, reportedly the largest order of stainless
05:27steel in U.S. history.
05:33On October 28, 1965, thousands of excited St. Louis residents gathered below as a team
05:40of daring steelworkers hoisted themselves up to the top of the arch and then welded
05:44the final section of steel into place.
05:49Saarinen's engineering marvel was complete.
05:53Today, two and a half million visitors ride futuristic trams to the top every year for
06:00a chance to peer out of its tiny angled windows and across the Mississippi River and the states
06:06of Missouri and Illinois.
06:09It's now considered a major world monument.
06:11Its price tag of $13 million was a huge amount of money for a city like St. Louis to spend
06:17on a structure that had no practical use.
06:21That's one reason the arch is much more than a memorial.
06:25It's a powerful symbol of a unique time in the nation when political power and public
06:30funds worked together to build soaring monuments that affirmed America's leading place in the
06:36world.
06:37For the people of St. Louis, the Gateway Arch has given them an indelible brand, and looking
06:44back through Saarinen's upside-down catenary curve today, it remains a gateway to the West,
06:51just as St. Louis once was more than two centuries ago.
06:57The city of St. Louis was founded here on the west bank of the Mississippi River in
07:011764 by French fur traders.
07:05At the time, St. Louis and all the land that would become Missouri was actually in Spanish
07:10territory.
07:11But it wasn't long before American settlers started exploring what Missouri had to offer.
07:19One of those was an American frontiersman named Daniel Boone, who had gained fame opening
07:24up Kentucky to settlers.
07:26In 1799, Boone left Kentucky and arrived in Missouri.
07:32The Boones built a massive stone house here in what's now the town of Defiance.
07:38Schoolchildren flock here from miles around to learn about what life was once like on
07:42the Missouri frontier.
07:47The house was built with two-and-a-half-foot-thick stone walls to protect Boone and his family
07:52from attack by members of Missouri's Indian tribes.
07:56From this house, Boone witnessed the historic events that would make Missouri a U.S. territory.
08:03In 1800, Spain turned over the Louisiana Territory to France.
08:09Three years later, France sold it to the U.S. for $15 million.
08:14It included all of what's now the state of Missouri.
08:18The next year, the legendary explorers Lewis and Clark arrived at the confluence of the
08:23Mississippi and Missouri rivers.
08:28They were the first European Americans to map and document the Missouri interior.
08:33It wasn't easy going.
08:35During much of their journey upriver, they didn't sail or even row.
08:41They trudged along the river's banks, pulling their boats with ropes instead.
08:51As they worked their way upriver, William Clark noticed a spot high above the banks
08:55of the Missouri that would make a good site for a U.S. fort.
09:01After the expedition, Clark returned to build a fort and trading post here in 1808.
09:08First named Fort Clark, but later known as Fort Osage, it was one of the first outposts
09:14of the U.S. government west of the Mississippi River, and turned Missouri into the gateway
09:19to the west.
09:24The problem was, Native American tribes like the Great and Little Osage, who already lived
09:29here, were seen as a threat to the new settlers.
09:33So Clark and the U.S. government started trying to convince the tribes to give up their lands.
09:39In the fall and early winter of 1808, while Fort Osage was still being constructed, representatives
09:46of the government convinced the chiefs of the Great and Little Osage nations to sign
09:50away roughly 50,000 square miles of land forever.
09:54In return, they were promised $1,500 in cash a year, and that they could still live and
10:02hunt here.
10:04The treaties guaranteed that the tribes would be protected by the U.S. government.
10:10But as a flood of settlers arrived in the region, hungry for more and more land, those
10:15promises were quickly broken.
10:19Over time, the tribes were forced out of Missouri forever and onto a reservation in Oklahoma.
10:28It's a story that was repeated across the new nation as the U.S. government and white
10:32settlers expanded west and tried to remove the native populations that stood in their
10:37way.
10:44In 1812, when Louisiana was made a state, the remaining area of the Louisiana Purchase
10:50was renamed the Missouri Territory.
10:54But just before it was being created, Missouri was rocked by a natural disaster so terrifying
11:02that many here quickly wondered whether living on the frontier was actually a good idea after
11:07all.
11:12What happened on May 22, 2011, will never be forgotten in western Missouri.
11:19On that hot, muggy afternoon, a supercell thunderstorm formed over southeastern Kansas.
11:27As the giant thundercloud grew and crossed the Missouri line, it spawned a massive E5
11:33tornado that headed straight for the city of Joplin.
11:40The twister, with winds of more than 200 miles per hour, tore right through town, causing
11:46almost $3 billion worth of damage.
11:50Over a thousand people were injured, 158 died, making it the deadliest tornado ever
11:57recorded in the U.S.
12:01Entire blocks of the city were demolished.
12:07Even though Missouri lies just outside Tornado Alley, dozens of twisters still touch down
12:12in the state every year.
12:15200 years before Joplin, just as Missouri was preparing to become a new U.S. territory,
12:21settlers in one frontier town discovered that devastating forces can also come from deep
12:25under this land, and erupt suddenly with catastrophic force.
12:31The terrifying events they experienced are known as the New Madrid Quakes.
12:39It all started at 2.15 a.m. on December 16, 1811.
12:44That's when a series of massive earthquakes suddenly started rocking the Midwest.
12:48They had registered more than 7.5 on the Richter scale.
12:53The epicenter was the Missouri frontier town of New Madrid, which lies on the Mississippi
12:58River.
12:59The shockwave spread out for hundreds of miles, affecting an area ten times as large as that
13:05of the infamous 1906 quake in San Francisco.
13:09Some tremors even managed to wake up President James Madison in Washington, D.C., more than
13:14700 miles away.
13:17But here in New Madrid, the ground shook so violently in the night that many thought the
13:22world was coming to an end.
13:25One eyewitness later wrote,
13:27The screams of the affrighted inhabitants running to and fro, the cries of the fowls
13:32and beasts of every species, formed a scene truly horrible.
13:37The inhabitants fled in every direction.
13:41Since the quake struck under the Mississippi River itself, they pushed the river's waters
13:45up into great swells, which caused, briefly, the Mississippi River to run backwards.
13:53On land, there was devastation everywhere.
13:56A lot of people thinks that the devil has come here, one resident later said.
14:08What exactly caused this disaster here in southeastern Missouri remains a mystery.
14:14Recently, researchers discovered that massive quakes have actually rocked the Midwest since
14:18as early as 2350 B.C.
14:22What they don't know is what exactly caused these earthquakes, since this area doesn't
14:27sit on the edge of tectonic plates.
14:31The Midwest is riddled with ancient faults, but scientists don't yet have a clear picture
14:36of why some of them are still seismically active.
14:41But based on past events, what they do know is that it's only a matter of time before
14:45the ground starts shaking again under this small Missouri town.
14:55One strange outcome of the New Madrid quakes was the creation of an odd-shaped appendage
14:59that now lies on Missouri's southern border, a geographical area known as Missouri's
15:06Following the quakes, many here in the southern part of the Missouri Territory fled to safer
15:12ground.
15:13But a wealthy local rancher named John Hardiman Walker saw an opportunity.
15:18Instead of leaving, he bought up thousands of acres of land from those who fled, for
15:22cheap.
15:24He came to be known as the Czar of the Valley.
15:28But a few years later, in 1818, as the boundary lines for the new state of Missouri were being
15:33drawn, Walker discovered that his vast holdings would actually end up in the new Arkansas
15:38Territory, not in the new state of Missouri.
15:41Since he wanted to be protected by Missouri state laws, he traveled all the way to Washington,
15:46shotgun in hand, to demand that Missouri's proposed southern border be changed to include
15:52his and his neighbors' land.
15:55He reportedly told them, if you won't let us in, we'll have a revolution and start a
16:00nation of our own.
16:02Sure enough, by the time Missouri received statehood in 1821, Walker had succeeded.
16:08The southern border had been redrawn, and Missouri's 980-square-mile bootheel was born.
16:15It may be the only time in American history that one individual used his money and power
16:21to dictate the actual borders of a U.S. state.
16:27Today, the bootheel is one of Missouri's most productive regions.
16:33There are great fields of cotton, endless acres of wheat, and vast farms of rice.
16:43When the rice is harvested, amazing patterns appear in the fields.
16:48They're created every year by the combines as they move back and forth to gather the
16:52rice and navigate the many levees in each field as they go.
16:57In the end, some rice fields look like giant works of art from the air.
17:05Missouri's bootheel also has its own star.
17:08It was here, in the small town of Kennett, surrounded by fertile fields, that singer
17:13Cheryl Crow was born in 1962.
17:19In 1980, she graduated from Kennett High School, where she was a drum majorette and
17:23an all-star athlete.
17:26Crow left Kennett to study music at the University of Missouri, and then headed to L.A., where
17:31she sang backup for stars like Rod Stewart and Michael Jackson before launching her own
17:35solo career.
17:39The University of Missouri, popularly known as Mizzou, was the first state university
17:44in the Louisiana Purchase Territory.
17:47It was founded in 1839, here in Columbia.
17:52Mizzou's storied past is best symbolized by these six columns in the center of campus.
17:59They once belonged to the school's oldest building, which burned down in 1892 after
18:04an engineer switched on 400 light bulbs for a campus event.
18:08They had been wired ten years earlier by students who were helping electrify the campus for
18:14the very first time.
18:16But the disaster had a silver lining.
18:23The University of Missouri decided to build six new buildings that now surround the columns,
18:28and contain many of the departments for which Mizzou is now famous, including the oldest
18:33school of journalism in the world.
18:36Many famous names have walked its halls here in the corner of the quad.
18:43Long before playwright Tennessee Williams wrote A Streetcar Named Desire and The Glass
18:47Menagerie, he studied journalism at Mizzou.
18:52That is, until his father took him out of school and made him work in a shoe factory
18:56instead.
18:58Missouri native Brad Pitt was a journalism major, but decided to head off to Hollywood
19:02just a few credits short of earning his degree.
19:07Other famous Mizzou grads include Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart, and Mad Men's Jon
19:13Hamm.
19:15But they are just a few of the big names that have called Missouri home.
19:19They include talk show host Rush Limbaugh, a Missouri native, and a young animator whose
19:25inspiration for Mickey Mouse came while working here in colorful Kansas City.
19:36It may seem odd that Missouri's largest city shares its name with its neighboring state,
19:43Kansas.
19:45But Kansas City was not named for the state of Kansas.
19:48It was named after the Kansas River that ends its journey here, where its waters merge with
19:54the Missouri River.
19:56In fact, there are two Kansas cities, Kansas City, Kansas, and Kansas City, Missouri.
20:02You can often tell a Missourian who comes from Kansas City because here in the western
20:06part of the state, many locals call their home state Missouri, not Missouri.
20:13Presidential candidates who jet into town often use Missouri, hoping that will endear
20:17them to voters.
20:19Kansas City was once a major hub for trains and cattle.
20:24The Kansas City Royals baseball team even got their name from a legendary livestock
20:28show here called the American Royal.
20:31Today, Kansas City is the heart of what has been called the Silicon Prairie, a high-tech
20:37boom that is sweeping across the Midwest, thanks in part to fiber-optic broadband built
20:42by companies like Google.
20:47But a century ago, Kansas City put itself on the map when it built a major monument
20:53that would honor men and women from Missouri and Kansas who served in World War I.
21:01It's all centered around Liberty Memorial, an impressive carved stone tower that rises
21:06217 feet over downtown.
21:11It was made into the National World War I Museum and Memorial in December 2014 under
21:17President Barack Obama.
21:20More than 156,000 Missouri residents fought in World War I.
21:26One local Kansas City resident who tried to enlist was a teenager named Walt Disney.
21:32But just 16 years old, he was too young, so he forged his birth certificate and got a
21:37job driving an ambulance for the Red Cross in France instead.
21:44After he returned to Kansas City, he studied graphic arts and in 1921 launched Laugh-O-Gram
21:49Studios with a partner to create animated cartoons.
21:54The building where Walt Disney started his first animation company still stands here
21:59on East 31st Street with a tribute to Disney on the facade.
22:05Disney himself claimed that his inspiration for Mickey Mouse came from working here.
22:10He said a little brown mouse used to inhabit one of his desks, which he soon trained to
22:14run in circles by tapping on its nose with a pencil.
22:19Laugh-O-Gram went bankrupt just two years later, but Disney took his inspiration for
22:24Mickey Mouse to Hollywood, and the rest is history.
22:34While Disney was trying to make a go of it here in Kansas City, so too were some of America's
22:38great jazz musicians.
22:42In the 1920s, this city was one of the great cradles of jazz, along with New York, Chicago,
22:49and New Orleans.
22:51It was all centered in Kansas City's African-American neighborhood at 18th and Vine.
22:57Jazz legends Big Joe Turner, Count Basie, and later Charlie Parker all performed in
23:03clubs here.
23:06Many of KC's jazz artists belonged to a unique African-American musicians' union as members
23:11of Local 627, which had its headquarters here at 18th and Vine.
23:17Today, nearby, a club known as the Blue Room keeps the history and spirit of Kansas City
23:23in the 1920s alive.
23:26During Prohibition, many came to 18th and Vine not just for jazz, but also to drink.
23:31Even though it was outlawed, liquor flowed freely in the clubs here.
23:35The rebel spirit of those days is one reason Kansas City earned the nickname, Paris of
23:39the Plains.
23:41It was all possible thanks largely to a corrupt political boss named Tom Pendergast.
23:47His giant mansion south of town still stands as a reminder of his power and the many financial
23:52rewards of running what was known as the Pendergast Machine.
23:59Tom Pendergast didn't hold office, but everyone knew that Kansas City was Tom's town.
24:05He controlled everything from the cops to gambling to prostitution, but he made his
24:10fortune on city and state contracts after creating what was called the Ten Year Plan.
24:17It was a plan to help workers in Kansas City get through the Depression by creating a series
24:22of massive new developments that would rely on manual labor.
24:26Many families have claimed that they wouldn't have survived the Depression if not for Tom
24:31Pendergast.
24:33But he made millions for himself by ensuring that his ready-mixed concrete company got
24:37most of the Ten Year Plan's commissions.
24:40Those projects included two important concrete towers, the county courthouse, and KC's new
24:46City Hall.
24:48Many called these two structures Pendergast's Pyramids.
24:53His ready-mixed concrete company also built the vast Municipal Auditorium in the heart
24:58of downtown.
24:59It's hard to imagine a building from that time that would require more concrete than
25:04this one.
25:06The Pendergast Machine was brought to its knees in 1939 when he was convicted of tax
25:11evasion for not declaring and paying tax on a $750,000 insurance bribe.
25:18He did more than a year in Leavenworth and then retired to his more than 5,000 square
25:23foot mansion.
25:25Up until the 1940s, the neighborhood around the Pendergast Mansion was basically for
25:36whites only.
25:38Deed restrictions barred African Americans from buying or occupying property here.
25:43That was also the case in neighborhoods around St. Louis.
25:47Despite this city's great wealth and industry at the turn of the 20th century, segregation
25:52limited blacks to certain neighborhoods, mostly on the fringe.
25:56One of the biggest was known as The Ville.
26:00It was home to Missouri music legend Chuck Berry, who lived in this red house where
26:06he wrote the hits Johnny B. Goode and Maybelline as one of the founders of rock and roll.
26:13In 1948, restrictions on where African Americans could live in St. Louis and across the nation
26:18were lifted.
26:20Many left The Ville and started moving into suburban communities that were primarily white.
26:26One of those became a flashpoint for what many have called the excessive use of deadly
26:30force by police officers.
26:34It's August 25th, 2014, and thousands are gathering at the Friendly Temple Missionary
26:39Baptist Church in St. Louis to mourn the death of 18-year-old Michael Brown, an unarmed African
26:45American man who was shot to death by a white police officer.
26:50It happened just a few miles northwest of downtown St. Louis, in the small Missouri
26:55city of Ferguson, on a street called Canfield Drive.
27:03On August 9th, a caller to 9-1-1 reported that a local convenience store had been robbed,
27:09Ferguson Market and Liquor.
27:11Nearby, at Canfield Green Apartments, a Ferguson police officer named Darren Wilson spotted
27:17Mr. Brown, who he believed fit the description of the suspect.
27:22There are conflicting accounts about what exactly happened next, but moments later,
27:27Michael Brown lay dead on this spot in the middle of Canfield Drive, fired on six times
27:33by Officer Wilson.
27:36The police would leave his covered body face down on the street for the next four hours.
27:42A makeshift memorial was later placed over the spot where he died.
27:49Within days, residents and others flooded onto West Florissant Avenue to protest the
27:53shooting and demand answers from the Ferguson police.
27:59But things got out of control.
28:02Ferguson's Quick Trip Mini Mart was looted and set on fire.
28:09Major businesses in town were vandalized and destroyed.
28:13Missouri's governor declared a state of emergency, and as National Guard troops moved in, West
28:19Florissant Avenue looked at times like a war zone.
28:27Several months later, in November 2014, a grand jury decided not to indict Officer Wilson.
28:35West Florissant Avenue descended into chaos again, and more than a dozen businesses were
28:40vandalized, including Ferguson Market and Liquor, where the story originally began.
28:49Four months later, a U.S. Justice Department report criticized the Ferguson Police Department
28:54for racial bias, and the chief and other officers resigned.
29:00Michael Brown was laid to rest on August 25, 2014.
29:05On that day, all eyes in the nation were on Ferguson, Missouri.
29:11What happened here has caused many other communities across America to review police procedures
29:17and the use of deadly force.
29:27Long before there were trains and airplanes, America's rivers served as the nation's highways.
29:35And for the towns along their banks, ships, barges, and steamboats were their connections
29:40to the outside world.
29:44Hannibal, Missouri, was no exception.
29:48This was once a bustling river port.
29:51Steam ships pulled into its docks every day, with goods and people from afar.
29:57Hustlers, cowboys, slave owners, and newly converted Mormons from England all passed
30:02through this busy port town on their journeys west.
30:08There was probably no one in Hannibal more curious about the ships and people that landed
30:13here than a young boy named Samuel Clemens, who would later be known as Mark Twain.
30:20Clemens grew up in this house in the middle of town.
30:23He was here, climbing out windows in the night to roam around the docks and ships in
30:28Hannibal, where he developed many of the memories of life on the Mississippi that he would turn
30:32into fiction as the writer Mark Twain.
30:37Ernest Hemingway said of Twain's classic novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,
30:41all modern American literature comes from this one book.
30:48At 11, Clemens left school and worked at printing presses in several cities before making
30:53his way to St. Louis, where he finally pursued his dream of becoming a riverboat pilot.
30:59In his book, Life on the Mississippi, Clemens wrote,
31:02A pilot in those days was the only unfettered and entirely independent human being that
31:09lived on the earth.
31:10The sound of that riverboat's whistle raised goosebumps as big as walnuts on me.
31:16Clemens took his pen name, Mark Twain, from a term that a pilot's apprentice called out
31:20when the water depth reached 12 feet, which was the depth the riverboat needed to pass.
31:26The curiosity that he developed as a child growing up in Missouri, along the Mississippi,
31:31ended up taking him around the world and inspiring him to write the stories that would make him a legend.
31:38Today, there are fewer vessels on the Mississippi River than there were in Mark Twain's day.
31:43And that means that today's barge pilots have much more time to keep their eyes on the skies
31:48for a glimpse of one of Missouri's most spectacular sights.
31:57Every fall, flocks of white pelicans use the Mississippi River as a superhighway
32:03to make their annual migrations from the northern U.S. and Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.
32:08It's a route that's known as the Mississippi Flyway.
32:12Pelicans are clumsy on land, but they are excellent swimmers.
32:17It's why they prefer to follow waterways like the Mississippi on their journey south.
32:25In the air, they are one of the most graceful birds in the world.
32:31Pelicans are designed to soar, with wings that can span more than nine feet.
32:37They often fly in formation to conserve energy.
32:41Scientists have discovered that pelicans flying in a V-pattern like these
32:45use up to 20 percent less energy than birds that fly alone.
32:50That's because the birds can ride in the wake created by the pelicans in front of them,
32:56and they carefully follow each other's cues.
33:00When a pelican in front flaps its wings, the birds behind do too,
33:04in what looks like perfect synchronization.
33:11When they want to climb, these birds often catch a ride
33:14on pockets of hot, rising air known as thermals, and then soar in circles.
33:20When they want to drop, they turn away from the wind and use gravity
33:25When they want to drop, they turn away from the wind
33:29and use gravity to let their bodies plummet.
33:36Come spring, they'll pass by here again, this time heading north.
33:48While the Mississippi River flows all the way down the eastern border of Missouri,
33:53the Missouri River cuts right across the state.
33:58The Missouri is the longest river in the nation,
34:01and there's a good reason it's also called the Big Muddy.
34:06Its waters are packed with silt.
34:10As the Missouri flows south on its 2,341-mile journey from Montana to the Mississippi,
34:17it devours the soil in the fields, farms, and ranches that line its banks.
34:23That's what makes it a big, wide, and muddy river.
34:28Some have called it the hungriest river ever created.
34:33Mark Twain is reported to have said,
34:35the Missouri River is too thick to drink and too thin to plow.
34:40But the silt-laden waters of the Missouri also carry with them nutrients
34:45that have made the land around it into some of the most fertile in the state.
34:49It's why, back in the early 1800s,
34:52many thought of Missouri as the next great southern state,
34:56since the land along the banks of the Missouri River
34:58was perfect for growing southern crops like flax and tobacco.
35:02They even called this region Little Dixie.
35:05Farmers flocked here and created southern-style plantations like this one.
35:10Out back, its slave quarters are still standing.
35:14Slave labor turned the fields of Little Dixie into fortunes for their owners.
35:20There were more enslaved people in this region
35:23than anywhere else in what's now Missouri.
35:27It's one reason that Missouri's application for statehood
35:30triggered a fierce debate over slavery in Washington.
35:33Members of Congress feared that if Missouri were accepted as a slave state,
35:38pro-slavery states would outnumber free ones.
35:41But in March 1820,
35:43they voted in favor of what's famously known as the Missouri Compromise.
35:49Missouri would become a new slave state,
35:52but the new state of Maine, carved out of Massachusetts,
35:55would be free,
35:57thereby ensuring a balance of 12 free and 12 slave states in the Union.
36:03But the issue of slavery in Missouri continued to flare,
36:07especially here in St. Louis.
36:10By the 1840s, two-thirds of African Americans in St. Louis were enslaved.
36:20In 1847, two of those slaves launched a remarkable lawsuit here,
36:25in the very courthouse that the Gateway Arch now frames.
36:29The final verdict in their case ended up shocking the nation
36:33and helping trigger the Civil War.
36:36The lawsuit, famously known as the Dred Scott case,
36:39was filed by Dred Scott and his wife Harriet.
36:43They came here to sue their owner, Irene Emerson, for their freedom.
36:49The case took more than ten years to wind its way through the courts
36:53and ended here, at the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C.,
36:57with a shocking verdict.
36:59In 1857, Supreme Court Justice Roger Brooke Taney read the majority ruling.
37:05Since Scott was black, and since his ancestors had been brought to America
37:09to be sold as slaves,
37:11the court had decided that Dred Scott was not actually a citizen
37:15within the meaning of the Constitution of the United States.
37:19And therefore, he had no right to sue for his freedom.
37:23The racist pro-slavery decision, in fact,
37:26The racist pro-slavery decision inflamed public opinion.
37:30It also angered a rising political star named Abraham Lincoln,
37:34who seized the issue and the moment
37:36to help lead his Republican Party to victory three years later in 1860.
37:43Having lost their case, Dred Scott and his wife
37:46were forced to remain slaves in Missouri
37:48until the son of one of Scott's former masters bought them and set them free.
37:56In his 63 years of life, Dred Scott had only 17 months of freedom.
38:07Eight years later, in January 1865,
38:10even before the Civil War was officially over,
38:13state delegates voted to end slavery in Missouri.
38:17By then, 27,000 Missourians had died in the war.
38:21Many were buried here,
38:23at Jefferson National Cemetery, south of St. Louis.
38:27Today, this cemetery is also the final resting place
38:31for tens of thousands of other servicemen and women
38:34who perished in conflicts that followed,
38:36from World War I right up to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
38:42When soldiers returned home to Missouri after the Civil War,
38:46jobs were hard to find and tensions flared.
38:50One of those fighters soon became one of America's most legendary outlaws.
39:00On September 5, 1847,
39:02Jesse James was born on this small farm in Kearney, Missouri.
39:10It was here where the young Jesse developed his distrust of the U.S. government
39:14and the Union cause
39:16after Federal soldiers arrived looking for information on Confederate guerrillas
39:20and ended up lynching his stepfather.
39:25James himself fought during the war as a member of a guerrilla group
39:29and arrived back at the farm having been wounded by Union soldiers during his surrender.
39:34Humiliated and enraged by the Confederates' defeat,
39:37Jesse James and his brother Frank turned to crime and murder.
39:46On February 13, 1866,
39:49up to 12 men rode into the town of Liberty, Missouri on horseback
39:54and robbed a savings bank at gunpoint.
39:57They made off with $60,000 and were never caught.
40:01Many believe this was Jesse James' first bank heist.
40:06Today, that former bank here in Liberty is home to the Jesse James Museum.
40:11Jesse and Frank and their gang were soon robbing banks,
40:15stagecoaches and trains and killed many who got in their way.
40:24From his perch here in the capital of Jefferson City,
40:27Missouri's governor wanted James captured, dead or alive.
40:32He placed a $10,000 bounty on his head.
40:36On April 3, 1882,
40:39Jesse James, who had recently moved into this small house in the town of St. Joseph,
40:44reached up to adjust a picture on the wall.
40:47While his back was turned, a man named Bob Ford,
40:51a brother of a member of the James gang,
40:53pulled out a pistol and shot Jesse James in the back of his head to cash in on the bounty.
41:01His body was returned to his family's farm and buried next to the house.
41:06It's said that his mother used to stand beside the road out front
41:09and sell pebbles from her legendary son's grave for 25 cents each.
41:17But Jesse James was just one of many criminals in Missouri after the Civil War.
41:24Here in Taney County, deep in the Ozarks,
41:27there was little law and order.
41:31Armed groups roamed the countryside,
41:33raping and murdering those whose Civil War sympathies didn't match their own.
41:38In 1884, residents of the county formed a vigilante group
41:42known as the Bald Knobbers to track down the criminals.
41:46Their ranks quickly swelled into the hundreds.
41:49But soon, some of the vigilantes became outlaws themselves.
41:55They were famous for covering their faces with elaborate horned masks
41:59and raiding farms at night, stealing horses and cattle
42:02and harassing and even murdering those who refused to join their ranks.
42:09It all came to a grisly end in 1889
42:13after three Bald Knobbers were found guilty of participating in two murders.
42:18On May 10th, here in the town of Ozark,
42:21they were scheduled to be hanged outside the county courthouse.
42:24But as a crowd looked on, the public execution went terribly wrong.
42:30Ozark sheriff had miscalculated the length of the rope required
42:34and two of the men had to be hanged a second time before they finally died.
42:39A witness described the executions as a scene of ghastliness.
42:44Ever since then, the Bald Knobbers have been a colorful part of Missouri legend.
42:49Stories of these vigilantes even helped give birth
42:53to one of the most famous theater towns in America.
42:56In 1959, two local residents of Branson, Missouri
43:00decided to create a stage version of a popular novel
43:03called The Shepherd of the Hills by Harold Bell Wright.
43:07It featured rich tales of the Bald Knobbers.
43:11The show quickly became a hit.
43:15As more and more people flocked to this little Missouri town,
43:18new theaters and stages were built to entertain them.
43:21Actors flooded in from across the country
43:24and Branson quickly became the biggest stage show town in the Midwest.
43:29But business really took off
43:31and the number of theaters here doubled
43:33after CBS News called Branson
43:35the live country music capital of the universe in 1991.
43:40Like Vegas, Branson has its own strip
43:43home to a replica of the Titanic
43:45complete with its own bow wave.
43:48And there's the Dixie Stampede,
43:50a 35,000 square foot dinner theater
43:53owned by country music legend Dolly Parton.
43:58But when it comes to entertainment here in Missouri,
44:01nothing compares to the rivalry of two teams
44:04especially when they face off in the World Series.
44:10When barge pilots guide their cargo down the Missouri River,
44:13they pass by a place called Hermann.
44:16Today, at least half of Missourians
44:18have at least one parent of German descent
44:21whose ancestors settled in communities like this one.
44:24With its German-style buildings and historic streets,
44:27Hermann is often called the most beautiful town in Missouri.
44:31Most people probably don't think of Missouri as a land of wine,
44:35but German settlers planted wine grapes here
44:38and soon the region was nicknamed the Missouri Rhineland
44:42after Germany's premier wine region.
44:45By the early 20th century,
44:47the Stonehill Winery here in town
44:49was one of the largest in the nation,
44:51turning out more than a million gallons of wine a year.
44:55But when Prohibition arrived,
44:57Stonehill and other wineries in Missouri were forced to close.
45:01Stonehill ended up growing mushrooms instead.
45:05It wasn't until the 1960s
45:07that an entrepreneur and his family bought the vineyard,
45:10replanted its grapes, and started making wine again.
45:13Today, they produce more than 200,000 gallons a year.
45:17In the days when Hermann was a bustling river port,
45:20there was practically a tavern on every corner
45:23and two local breweries to supply them.
45:26Today, a microbrewery called the Tin Mill
45:29keeps that tradition alive.
45:31The tradition of brewing beer in Missouri
45:34reaches far beyond Hermann.
45:36In fact, it's one that's known to the world
45:39thanks to a beer called Budweiser.
45:42It was here in Missouri
45:44that two of the most famous names in beer got their start.
45:48Missouri's Anheuser-Busch Brewery
45:50lies just south of the city of St. Louis
45:53on the exact site where the original brewery
45:56that started it all was founded.
45:58In 1852, a German saloon owner
46:01opened his Bavarian brewery here.
46:04Financial troubles later forced him to sell,
46:07but its new owners quickly turned the brewery around
46:10thanks in part to their pioneering use
46:13of pasteurization and refrigerated rail cars.
46:16They enabled cold beer to be delivered
46:19to bars and taverns hundreds of miles away.
46:22The fortunes earned from Anheuser-Busch beer
46:25allowed the Busch family to buy a large farm
46:28here in St. Louis that once belonged
46:31to Civil War hero and U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant.
46:35Anheuser-Busch then built this 25-room mansion
46:38known as the Big House, which was completed in 1913.
46:41But less than a decade later, prohibition set in
46:44and the Busch family was forced to come up with ways
46:47to keep their company afloat.
46:49To do it, they sold ice cream and soda instead of beer.
46:53To celebrate the end of prohibition,
46:56Anheuser-Busch set out teams of Clydesdales
46:59pulling beer wagons painted in the company's signature colors
47:02and a tradition was born.
47:05Today, these legendary work horses are raised
47:08on their own farm outside St. Louis
47:11here at Warm Springs Ranch.
47:14Not any Clydesdale can become a Budweiser Clydesdale.
47:17They have to be more than 4 years old,
47:20more than 6 feet high, and have white stockings
47:23on all 4 feet.
47:26Horses under 1,800 pounds don't make the cut.
47:29Those that do get to stay are treated like royalty
47:32and are even chauffeured in 50-foot air-cushioned
47:35tractor-trailers when they leave the farm
47:38for duty on marketing tours.
47:41The friendship between dogs and Clydesdales,
47:44famously featured in Super Bowl commercials,
47:47is not entirely fiction.
47:50Dalmatians have actually been traveling
47:53with the Budweiser Clydesdales since the 1950s.
47:56Back then.
47:59Today, the company is part of AB InBev,
48:02a global beverage conglomerate based in Belgium.
48:05But that hasn't stopped Budweiser from flowing
48:08from the taps here at Bush Stadium,
48:11home field of the St. Louis Cardinals.
48:14The team got its start back in 1892
48:17as the St. Louis Browns,
48:20but was given the name the Cardinals in 1900
48:23when a reporter overheard a fan
48:26call the team's red-colored jerseys
48:29a lovely shade of Cardinal.
48:32The name stuck, and the St. Louis Cardinals
48:35went on to win 11 World Series titles
48:38led by baseball legend Stan the Man Musial.
48:41He was one of the greatest hitters
48:44in the sport's history.
48:47Strangely enough, of his 3,630 hits,
48:50but in 1985,
48:53the Cardinals suffered a humiliating World Series defeat
48:56at the hands of their own Missouri rivals,
48:59the Kansas City Royals.
49:02Game 7 was played here,
49:05at the Royals' legendary Coffman Field
49:08where the Royals trounced the Cardinals 11-0
49:11to win the 1985 title.
49:14The Royals didn't get another chance
49:17to win the World Series.
49:20They finally lost to the San Francisco Giants 3-2
49:23to the dismay of many here in Kansas City
49:26and across the Midwest.
49:29Standing next to Coffman Field
49:32is Arrowhead Stadium,
49:35home of the Kansas City Chiefs.
49:38In 2013, during a game against the San Francisco 49ers,
49:41Arrowhead was deemed to have the loudest crowd roar
49:44When Chiefs and Royals fans want to get away
49:47from the crowds and the noise,
49:50all they have to do is head south
49:53into the rolling hills and forests
49:56of Missouri's Ozark Mountains
49:59or race across the lakes that fill its valleys.
50:02Missouri is a land rich with stories
50:05that touch the heart of the nation,
50:08but it's also a place with plenty of space to roam.
50:11From the wild banks of the Big Muddy
50:14across seemingly endless fertile fields
50:17to the mist-covered tops of its highest peaks
50:20that tumble down to ancient prairies
50:23and a towering city
50:26known as the Paris of the Plains,
50:29there's simply nothing like
50:32the colorful state of Missouri.
50:41music
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