Films: The Natural Environment
Browse the entire American Experience series featuring over 250 films. Watch full films online, download teacher’s guides, go behind the scenes, and learn more about your favorite films.
The Alaska Pipeline
Native Alaskans, oil company representatives, environmentalists, politicians, and others tell the story of the 800-mile pipeline.
Alone on the Ice
In 1934, American polar explorer Richard Byrd became the first to experience winter in Antarctica's interior.
Ansel Adams
The life of the legendary photographer, known best for his black and white images of the wilderness of the American West.
Battle for Wilderness : 1 hr
President Theodore Roosevelt was caught in the middle of the first major battle for wilderness preservation in Yosemite National Park.
The Civilian Conservation Corps : 1 hr
The New Deal program CCC put three million young men to work in camps across America.
Dinosaur Wars : 1 hr
The epic battle waged over dinosaur fossils by rival paleontologists in the American West.
Fatal Flood
In 1927, the Mississippi River flooded from New Orleans to Illinois, leaving a million people homeless and leading to a major black migration to the North.
Grand Coulee Dam : 90 mins
The contradictory history of a dam that became a statement of American power and prestige.
The Great Famine : 1 hr
The American effort to relieve starvation in Soviet Russia in 1921 during the worst natural disaster in Europe in 500 years.
The Great San Francisco Earthquake
Vivid memories of those trapped in the terrifying temblor of 1906 that killed thousands of Californians.
The Greely Expedition : 1 hr
A daunting story of shipwreck, starvation, mutiny and cannibalism amongst a group left abandoned in the high Arctic.
The Hurricane of '38 : 1 hr
Before radar had been invented a devastating hurricane hit America, surprising residents of the East Coast and killing more than 600 people.
Into the Deep: America, Whaling & the World : 2 hrs
The 300-year saga of the American whaling industry.
The Johnstown Flood : 1 hr
When an earthen dam broke without warning, a small city in Pennsylvania was swept away in a wall of water over 30 feet high.
Lost in the Grand Canyon
John Wesley Powell's epic journey into the unknown Grand Canyon was filled with adventure as his team mapped the Colorado River for the first time.
Mount Rushmore : 1 hr
High on a granite cliff in South Dakota's Black Hills tower the huge carved faces of four American presidents: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt.
Panama Canal : 90 mins
The most daring and innovative accomplishment at the turn of the 20th century.
Rachel Carson's Silent Spring : 1 hr
Her 1963 warnings about the effects of pesticides and herbicides sparked a revolution in environmental policy.
Surviving the Dust Bowl : 1 hr
The story of the farmers who dreamed of prosperity and lived through ten years of drought, dust, disease and death.
Troublesome Creek: A Midwestern
A personal story of one family's dramatic effort to hold onto their family farm in Iowa as massive foreclosures sweep the nation in the 1990s.
Views of a Vanishing Frontier : 1 hr
The journey of Prince Maximilian, German naturalist, and artist Karl Bodmer, who explored the Mississippi River area from 1832-1834.
Walt Whitman
Today one of the most-recognized figures in American literary history, poet Walt Whitman was denounced by critics in his own time.
Wild By Law : 1 hr
Robert Marshall, Aldo Leopold and Howard Zahniser dedicated their lives to protect the shrinking American wilderness.
Yosemite - The Fate of Heaven : 1 hr
This stunning film portrait of Yosemite National Park uses the 1851 diary of the first expedition of soldiers into the Native American territory.
