:08:00
Five generations ago,
a mere 125 years back...
:08:06
... this land was known only as the West...
:08:09
... known only to a handful of white men...
:08:12
... lonely trappers wandering its vastness
in search of beaver.
:08:17
They were known as "mountain men",
a new breed.
:08:20
Men like Jim Bridger, Linus Rawlings...
:08:25
... more Indian than the Indians
in all but blood.
:08:28
They held to no law but their own...
:08:31
... drifted free as the clouds,
settled nowhere, kept forever on the move.
:08:37
Their mocassined feet and unshod horses
left no trace on the land.
:08:44
Like the Indians,
with whom they were at peace...
:08:47
... they wanted nothing
beyond what they found and little of that.
:08:51
The mountains, the forests,
the harsh country...
:08:56
... were as unchanging to them
as the stars...
:08:59
... and just as unyielding.
:09:03
Far behind the mountains,
beyond the rolling plains...
:09:07
... they had left the people of the East...
:09:10
... people who were restless in another way.
:09:13
The kind who would look at the mountain
and see a watershed...
:09:16
... look at the forest
and see lumber for houses...
:09:19
... look at a stony field and see a farm.
:09:22
Their faces and their instincts
had been turned to the West...
:09:26
... ever since Plymouth Rock
and James Town.
:09:29
The trapper"s road was the trade
of the wolf or the bend of the canyon.
:09:33
But for whole families following the sun,
there had to be broader ways.
:09:39
There were no roads into the woodlands,
only rivers...
:09:44
... and they flowed in the wrong direction,
north or south.
:09:47
Or else they stopped at the Alleghanys.
:09:50
Until one day...
:09:52
... a new river took source in the mind
of a man named DeWitt Clinton.
:09:57
He conceived of a river that would go west.