In 1862, the Congress passed the first of several Railroad Acts, choosing a route which went from Omaha to Sacramento — much of it an old pioneer trail-- and naming the two companies to be responsible for the construction of the railroad: the Central Pacific, building from the West, and the Union Pacific, building from the East.
At the dawn of the 20th century, the struggle over coal — the material that fueled America — led to the largest armed insurrection since the Civil War and turned parts of West Virginia into a bloody war zone.
The bitter conflict in 1892 at his steel plant in Homestead, Pennsylvania revealed Andrew Carnegie's conflicting beliefs regarding the rights of labor.
Spanning the momentous years from 1863 to 1877, Reconstruction tracks the extraordinary stories of ordinary Americans — Southern and Northern, white and black — as they struggle to shape new lives for themselves in a world turned upside down.
As the pace of industrialization quickened, and profits accumulated in the hands of a few, some workers began to organize and advocate for unionization. The workers wanted more safety regulations, better wages, fewer hours, and freedom of speech and assembly.Â
Meet the titans and barons of the glittering late 19th century, whose materialistic extravagance contrasted harshly with the poverty of the struggling workers who challenged them. The vast disparities between them sparked debates still raging today.
In the early weeks of 1968, after a decade-long search for oil in Alaska's frozen wilderness, gas burst out of an exploratory well on the North Slope with such force the crew thought it was about to blow. Geologists soon calculated that as much as ten billion barrels of oil lay below the frozen tundra of Prudhoe Bay -- the largest oil find in North America.
 Foreman James Harvey Strobridge grudgingly agreed to hire 50 Chinese men as wagon-fillers. Their work ethic impressed him, and he hired more Chinese workers for more difficult tasks.
The late Hal K. Rothman was professor and chair of the Department of History at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. In this interview he discusses Las Vegas and casinos.
Hard Hat Riot revisits New York in 1970, when student protestors against the Vietnam War violently clashed with construction workers, ushering in a new political and cultural divide that would redefine the American political landscape.
