The grandest enterprise under God

"After the Civil War Americans set out with a new energy and optimism to finally unite the East and the West. To do this, they embarked on one of the greatest technological achievements of the age--building the first transcontinental railroad to conquer forbidding mountains, harsh deserts and awesome distances."@en
"Documents the technological achievement and sheer human effort involved in building the railroad across the West. The railway transformed the West, bringing immigrants and settlers hungry for land, cowboys and cattle herds and hunters who drove the buffalo to the edge of extinction."@en
"See how the transcontinental railroad was built, and then how it opened up the West to European settlers and brought on the extermination of the buffalo and the defeat of Southern Plains Indian tribes. Witness the transformation through first-person accounts from Native Americans, European immigrants, Chinese laborers, buffalo hunters, homesteaders from the eastern U.S., and cowboys on the dusty trails leading from Texas"