the dawn of the 20th century America is changing in ways never thought possible cities explode outwards booze fuels a criminal underworld millions head north to escape poverty violence erupts America is about to become the richest nation on earth we are pioneers and trailblazers we fight for freedom we transform our dreams into the truth our struggles will become a nation it's 1900 the dawn of the greatest consumer boom the world has ever seen but none of it will happen without the discovery of what lies beneath the Texas dirt oil oil will power the 20th century and build the modern world men call it black gold Texas a wide open and wild territory closer to the Old West than modern-day the Hamel brothers out 24x cattleman Kurt 28x salesman a new breed of pioneer on the American frontier oilman young rugged and vicious known as some of the best in the business in the beginning of oil it was hardship everything was hard to do we didn't know anything only the surface of the ground oil has just been discovered in Texas but the wells are small prospectors have a hunch that this shallow hill near Beaumont east of houston signifies oil what they don't know what nobody knows is that beneath their feet lie oil reserves worth more than 11 billion dollars today nowhere in the world as anybody discovered this much oil before the first prospectors to tap into these reserves will become rich beyond their wildest dreams the field the Hamel brothers are hired to drill will become the stuff of legend spindletop until the late 1850s oil had been really an annoyance to most people and people would dig water wells and if they happen to strike oil by accident that curse their bad luck but with the development of railroads and with the Industrial Revolution for the first time people began seeking oil until recently whale oil cornered the market it was used in lamps to light homes and streets but the whales have been hunted to near-extinction one discovery has saved them oil made from the remains of tiny organisms in the world's oceans it's been down there for as long as a hundred and sixty million years Native Americans have used it as medicine then in 1854 scientists in Pennsylvania discovery can be used for lighting there's no turning back Cole still dominates industry powering trains and factories but it's dirty and less efficient a ton of cold has half the energy of the ton of oil for the right rig in the right place there are fortunes to be made well that is the American dream is that this is a land of opportunity where anything is possible if you roll up your sleeves and get to it prospectors have tried drilling at Spindletop before but all previous wells here came up empty the land great for farming is lousy for drilling earlier attempts hit hundreds of feet of sand and collapsed the Hamill's get two dollars for every foot they drilled top dollar in those days and when investors pay top dollar they expect results their contract pays them to 1200 feet if they don't hit oil by then the wells are done and they're through that's good that's good right now they're at 400 feet drilling for oil is dangerous work 6,000 died in oil explosions every year most rigs are primitive tools smashing through rock by pounding it with a heavy object on a cable but this is Sam you can't smash your way through sand the Hamill's are gambling on revolutionary technology a steam engine that drills a pipe through the ground so far it's been able to bore through 500 feet of sand and bedrock with no collapses but it's 600 feet disaster strikes the drill hits a pocket of explosive gas and water the pressure forces gas back up through the pipe they're lucky to survive I see a really strong parallel between the culture of prospecting and the culture of entrepreneurial endeavors do all your surveys you plan it out you think it's really great you dig down and there's nothing there it's really hard to predict progress is slow they're fighting for every foot the sand is too fine even for their drill the walls of the borehole are starting to collapse normally these kinds of rigs pump water into the borehole to support its walls but the sand is 25 the water too thin they need a thicker liquid they're forced to improvise using only material they have on hand water dirt and cows we brought in a small herd of cattle and turned them loose in the nearby water pit the cattle stomped around and made lots of mud for us the answer to all their problems is mud with mud holding up the walls of the borehole they're back on track from then on we operated the rig 24 hours a day Curt's innovation is still in use today only now rigs use synthetic compounds but drilling fluids like this are still called mud it's January 10th 1901 the Hamill's have been drilling for over two months they're past eleven hundred feet still no breakthrough another 100 and they'll have to quit then I walked over and look down the hole there I heard sort of heard something kind of bubbling just a little bit and look down there and hear this frothy oil was starting up it was just breathing like you know coming up and sinking back with the gas pressure and it kept coming up and over the rotary table and each flow a little higher and a little higher and a little higher this is a day that changes America forever finally it came up with such momentum that had just shot up clear through the top of the derrick the geyser of crude oil shoots almost 200 feet into the air the Hamill's were hoping for 50 barrels a day the well would soon be pumping out over 80,000 making the u. s. the largest oil producer in the world overnight the backers funding the rig are nearly 40 million dollars richer the Hamel brothers become legends they are just burst out of the ground and it spewed for days and days before they could bring it under control it really marked the beginning of the petroleum age in the United States one could argue in the world as well spindletop changes everything oil production in the u.
s. instantly increases fifty percent within a year 500 oil companies are born including Texaco and Gulf the price of oil plummets from two dollars a barrel to three cents it's cheaper than water cheap enough to turn into gasoline around the turn of the century millions of Americans live their entire lives within 50 miles of their home gasoline makes the US mobile in ways never thought possible today the average American drives the equivalent of two and a half round trips to the moon one man will seize the opportunity in cheap oil and change the face of the nation Detroit 1908 Henry Ford Maverick visionary obsessive a man with a bad reputation recently let go by the company that will soon become Cadillac he launches his third attempt to build cars but these will be different there are only eight thousand cars in the u. s.
expensive toys for the wealthy like owning a private check today there were dozens and dozens of small companies building cars that were essentially playthings for the rich they were notoriously unreliable they were not standardized they were hand-built essentially and if you were gonna own a car you practically had to have your own mechanic on staff as well to keep the thing running nobody's figured out how to make a car that's affordable and low cost Henry Ford is about to change that it won't just change how cars are made it will change how everything is made Detroit 1913 Henry Ford isn't just making a revolutionary car he's making it in a revolutionary way the production line high-volume low-cost products identical the man who places the part doesn't fasten it the man who puts in a bolt doesn't put on the nut and the man who puts on the nut doesn't tighten it work is standardized simplified it's a more efficient way to make everything mass production sweeps the nation and it changes the world to be an assembly line worker you did not have to have a high degree of skill you didn't have to be a card-carrying machinist or whatever it might be all you had to do was to learn how to turn the same wrench on the same not 5,000 times a day that was your job prices plummet in 1913 a Model T costs two years wages by 1924 it's just three months the Model T without question is one of the single objects in the history of America that changed America what Henry Ford developed was the car for the common man the impact of this little car is massive 300,000 sold in 1913 by 1924 there's a new model t every 24 seconds suddenly this form of transportation which was entirely new was something that people could actually engage in they could afford it it wasn't like a spaceship where there are only several of them and there are millions and millions of dollars Washington State 1915 the Model T success is creating a nation of student drivers Rosco sheller used to be a dairy farmer he's about to start a new job car salesman the pay is fantastic the only problem is he can't drive not riding the horse take it his boss offers to teach him the morning of his first day of work it's not long before Rosco has his first customers luckily there's a manual called how to drive an automobile cranking is an art that's essential for the new motorists to become proficient in it is always a good plan oddly a good idea to learn to steer first steering is a very simple manipulation an excellent plan for the beginning is to find a long straight and slightly downhill Road free of other crap pankaj Rosco takes his customers for a test drive most are used to a horse and buggy the majority of first time drivers completely ignored corners instead of using a break he shouted whoa at the top of their lungs power often day demand I teach his wife and every kid old enough to reach the pedals America's love affair that the automobile has begun the American has a great sense of freedom and not being tied to one place if I don't like it here I'm gonna pack everything in the card they don't require anybody's permission they don't have to sign out and the automobile really enables that when i came to america the first thing i want to think about how can i get hold of a cop i had a love affair with cars so very beginning because this method of movement that can enable you to see fast expensive place it's something i never experienced in china never this is a something I wanted to do almost more than anything else is to buy a car Roscoe sheller is one of America's pioneer car dealers today America drives 2. 7 trillion miles a year vehicles that are descendants of Henry Ford's Model T cars by the roaring 20s they are transforming the lives of millions now you don't have to live near worth cities explode outwards creating giant suburbs brand new highways are built shopping malls with giant car parks the biggest urban sprawl of all Los Angeles the center of a massive entertainment industry eight hundred films produced a year in the 1920s double the amount today a feverish land grab is in full swing high in the Hills a real estate syndicate buys 500 acres they hire stonemasons from Italy to build luxury mansions overlooking the city dream homes fit for oil tycoons and film stars to kick off their investment the biggest advertising sign on the planet 4,000 light bulbs announce the name of this luxury development hollywoodland movie director Busby Berkeley buys the first house on the plot it's supposed to be a temporary sign by 1949 the end is removed it becomes just Hollywood built on oil fuelled by cars and movies la is the fastest growing city in the world but none of this incredible growth has been possible without one other vital ingredient water William Mulholland Irish immigrant tenacious ruthless superintendent of the LA City Water Company it's 1904 la is running out of water it's headline news it's up to Mulholland to find it his reputation is on the line the story of the West is a story of water because you can't turn this region that has a fertile soil and sites for city development without that incredibly scarce resource in the West Southern California rainfall as low as 2 inches a year temperatures as high as 134 degrees the surrounding mountains get plenty of rainfall the problem is it stays there la has one small River it provides a fraction of the water the growing city will need California is at the edge of the Great Western Desert and in order for large numbers of people to live in the cities of California means had to be provided to get the water from where it was in California mountains to where the people were in the cities Mulholland must find water the fate of Southern California hangs in the balance his search begins just outside the city nothing he moves 200 miles northeast still nothing finally he reaches an area called Owens Valley it's perfect water flowing out of the mountains has formed a massive Lake 110 square miles result an oasis of lush farmland locals call it the Switzerland of California aided only by gravity this water could flow all the way to Los Angeles all you need is an aqueduct it sounds simple but the engineering feat will be phenomenal it's going to take 223 miles of steel pipe and concrete waterway 120 miles of railroad traffic 218 miles of power lines 500 miles of growth if mulholland can pull it off he'll completely transform not just LA but the entire state the first giant steps in creating the largest agricultural economy in the country but it will come at a cost the Los Angeles Aqueduct five years 5,000 men 223 miles of steel and concrete that changed the face of the West at the time the largest water project in the world it cost the lives of 43 men finally in 1913 it's finished this is yours it is your own fidelity and unfaltering courage that made the work possible the aqueduct is completed and it is good the aqueduct saves Los Angeles the city grows from 250,000 in 1902 2 million in 1930 the federal government's investment in projects that move water in the West is more deeply formative of the character of the western region than all the Cowboys and sodbusters and wagon trains and pioneers there ever were but for Owens Valley the source of the water it's a disaster the lake is sucked dry creating a giant wasteland local farmers attempt to blow the aqueduct up over ten times but it's an unwinnable contest this was controversial stuff there was a lot of backroom politicking lot of buying people off this made a lot of people unhappy it devastated a region of California the source of that water but it was enormously beneficial in fact one could argue Los Angeles could not have grown in the way it did without mahalin architecting that aqueduct of water Breen bought to that area owens valley farm land remains barren for decades but in the 1990s la authorities begin the long process of restoring it it's always been true that if you want something great you may have to give up something great to get there we've sacrificed our blood and treasure for just about every great thing in America the Los Angeles Aqueduct remains one of America's most ambitious engineering efforts when they built the aqueduct to bring water down across an entire state what a feat that was and how it is so fundamentally changed a whole part of the of the state of California and when you fly over California now it always look out the window and I look down you can see that glittering silver ribbon that runs the entire length of the state was always just magical to me 1914 the aqueduct is a year old America is booming world war one creates massive demand for weapons cars and oil in just four years the economy doubles America is poised to become the richest nation on earth three generations from the end of slavery black southerners are on the move in search of a better life between 1915 and nineteen thirty one and a half million head north one in seven of the entire African American population of the US it's called the great migration the North represented the promised land to blacks in the south if you can go now if you can work if you can go north you're not going to have to step on the off the curb when White's walk down the block if you can go north you can live in better neighborhoods and your children get a better education Manny had for the Ford plant in Detroit Ford is unique in paying black and white workers the same a staggering five dollars a day five times more than a sharecroppers wage in Georgia but equal pay doesn't mean equal treatment Frank Hadas is an engineer at the plant you could have them on some dirty rough job where there wouldn't be many whites to complain against them but if you try to mix them in the assembly lines or anyplace else where whites predominated on their coats touching those whites you know you couldn't do that many white workers fear losing jobs to the new black workforce resentment is at the boiling point the denial of white privilege clashing with the ambition of blacks looking for the promised land inevitably led to an explode the fuse will be lit in the summer of nineteen nineteen Chicago there's no official segregation but it's everywhere even on the beaches of Lake Michigan White's refused to sell their houses to blacks homeowners in Hyde Park and Kenwood hold a meeting the Negro invasion of the district is the worst calamity that has struck the city property owners should be notified to stand together block by block to prevent such invasion sunday July 27 a day that will be etched in history 17 year old Eugene Williams skips church with some friends to go for a swim John Harris is with them we could swim underwater and dive and come up swam kick dive and play around a group of black men wander over to the white Beach they are not welcome Eugene's raft is also drifting in that direction it can only spell trouble July 1919 on a beach in Chicago tensions arising a white bather throws rocks John Harris thinks it's a game he'd take a rock and throw it and we dump one fellow would say look out and we would duck it but it's no game this is racial tension transplanted to city life by the time they get Eugene Williams back to the beach he's dead the police officer on duty is Daniel Callahan he refuses to arrest the white man who threw the fatal rock arrests a black man instead this is how the Chicago race riot of 1919 begins hate bloody days five hundred wounded 38 died 23 of them black but the violence is just beginning riots erupted in 24 more cities across America it's called the red summer many found that the promised land was not the promise they thought the north was better than the south but there was not the land of milk and honey the divide separating black and white wideness ghettos expand Harlem in New York Paradise Valley in Detroit the hill district in pittsburgh in chicago the south side separate but not equal black americans are on the outside looking in but black neighborhoods also mean black majorities and in America a jarred means power in 1928 voters on Chicago's South Side elect Oscar de priest the first black congressman in the North 80 years later another Chicago resident becomes the nation's first black president it's 1920 the country is at a turning point for the first time more Americans live in urban areas than rural cities become a symbol for decadence and danger jazz cabaret liquor won't take my shirt off your back it should be whipped out of the land of America will a whiff of scorpions Billy Sunday retired baseball player reform drinker the most famous preacher in the country I go to a young man up on the scaffold America as a booze problem three you will affect Oh at its peak there's a saloon for every 300 people 20 times more than today fifty percent of all crime involves alcohol billy sunday isn't the only one who thinks alcohol is ruining america religious groups rally industrialists say it affects productivity women campaign against drunk men beating up their wives alcohol is the crystal meth of its day for many a total ban is the only solution on january 16 1919 the 18th amendment to the constitution is ratified prohibition makes a manufacture and sale of alcohol illegal this period in the early 20th century just captured a whole swirl of desire to can rein in what's happening shape it come up with new policies that will ensure that people will get along they will live virtuous lives so prohibition is this grand experiment but prohibition also creates a nation of criminals this is one of them Willie Carter sharp 26 thrill-seeker outlaw they call her the rum-running queen it's 1928 prohibition is in its eighth year it was the excitement that got me we're mostly kids who like the excitement cars scattering dashing along the streets behind her is a convoy of moonshine Franklin County Virginia is one of the biggest moonshine producers in the country bootleg liquor headed across the county line Sharp's job decoy to distract the feds in Franklin County 99 residents out of a hundred are thought to be involved secret stills are everywhere moonshine is flooding across the country 100 million gallons a year even the President as a private wine cellar it seems so ridiculous anyone would ever tell you you cannot legislate morality you certainly can't stop people from drinking people need to drink at the end of the day outrunning the cops at the new extreme sport locals witness Carter sharp in action I saw her go right through our town there was a federal car after her they were trying to shoot down her tires she was driving at 75 miles an hour she got away she gets away because of this an ordinary car souped up for more horsepower a supercharger Rams additional air into the cylinders the result America's first muscle cars they're so popular they kicked start a new national pastime stock car racing even today there's a driving maneuver called the bootleg turn but there's a darker side to bootlegging the illegal liquor trade is worth tens of billions in today's money and it's not Willie Carter sharp was in charge it's gangsters organized crime has a stranglehold stretching across the country Lucky Luciano in New York Frank chichi DeMaio Kansas City Joseph Iron Man ardizzone e in LA the Licavoli family Detroit Harry Rosen Philadelphia Charles King Solomon Boston and in Chicago the most notorious gangster of all Al Capone he earns over a hundred dollars a minute from illegal alcohol that's fifteen hundred dollars today but his luck is about to change 2122 North Clark Street headquarters of Capone's bitter rival George bugs Moran februari 14 1929 two men in police uniform arrived normally the cops leave without arrests after a quick payoff but this isn't a normal day these are at regular cops what happens on Valentine's Day 1929 will change the course of prohibition in America Chicago 1929 more than half the city's cops are on the table in a north side garage seven gangsters are lined up they think it's routine but today is no shakedown behind them a group of men arrived to carrying Thompson submachine guns it's the most notorious slaying in mob history the question is who's behind the hit the police or Al Capone detectives and photographers flood the scene this shocking picture will appear in newspapers around the u. s.
this is what prohibition has come to America has had enough the federal government is forced to act major Calvin Goddard methodical clinical weapons expert pioneer of a brand new science ballistic forensics for the first time vital clues like bullet casings at a murder scene can be analyzed guards work leads to one of the first forensic crime labs in America it will revolutionize the work of the FBI his job to find out who is behind the st.
