American Experience

Chart the political and social changes wrought by the pervasiveness and fear of death during the Civil War.

Highlights from our 2012 season.

Explore the history of an American president who rose from a broken childhood to become one of the most successful politicians in modern American history. 5/15/2012

Explore the history of an American president who rose from a broken childhood to become one of the most successful politicians in modern American history. 5/8/2012

The most famous athlete of his time, his stunning triumph at the 1936 Olympic Games captivated the world even as it infuriated the Nazis. Despite the racial slurs he endured, Jesse Owens' grace and athleticism rallied crowds across the globe. But when the four-time Olympic gold medalist returned home, he could not even ride in the front of a bus.

The most famous athlete of his time, his stunning triumph at the 1936 Olympic Games captivated the world even as it infuriated the Nazis. Despite the racial slurs he endured, Jesse Owens' grace and athleticism rallied crowds across the globe. But when the four-time Olympic gold medalist returned home, he could not even ride in the front of a bus.

Jesse Owens' success on the track didn't translate to fair treatment off the track.

After victories at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Jesse Owens returned to a segregated America.

Jesse Owens' victories at the 1936 Berlin Olympics were an affront to Nazi beliefs.

The most famous athlete of his time, his stunning triumph at the 1936 Olympic Games captivated the world even as it infuriated the Nazis. Despite the racial slurs he endured, Jesse Owens' grace and athleticism rallied crowds across the globe. But when the four-time Olympic gold medalist returned home, he could not even ride in the front of a bus.

The unbounded optimism of the Jazz Age and the shocking consequences when reality finally hit on October 29th, ultimately leading to the Great Depression.

From the program "TR, the Story of Theodore Roosevelt," an animation of the locks system of the Panama Canal demonstrates how a ship would travel across the Panamanian Isthmus. This "lake and lock" canal was favored by Roosevelt, who Chief Engineer George Goethals called "the real builder of the Panama Canal."

Take a boat through the Panama canal with this time-lapse video of the locks in action.

During the Great Depression, Americans built the Hoover Dam, overcoming technical challenges to erect one of the greatest engineering works in history.

Thousands of men began arriving at the Grand Coulee Dam construction site in June 1933, enticed by the promise of jobs. Located hundreds of miles from the nearest big city, there was no easy way to get to the construction site. The dam would have to span beyond the width of the river -- almost a mile across -- and would need to rise 500 feet in the air to stop up the river to build the reservoir.

Eight years after beginning construction, the Grand Coulee Dam was dedicated in front of a crowd of 8,000 on March 22, 1941. The dam's success created an insatiable demand for electricity, and the dam, along with others that were erected on the Columbia in the years following, served as the fuel for the growth of the metropolitan areas of the American West.

The biggest challenge in building Grand Coulee Dam was diverting the flow of the Columbia. To make this happen, the workers had to build cofferdams, temporary structures that keep the river at bay, allowing workers to dig out the mud and expose the granite bedrock on which the dam would rest. The west side cofferdam was completed on March 23, 1935. Soon after, the water level rose 32 feet.

In the spring of 1952, work was finally underway on the Columbia Basin Project, a huge system of canals, tunnels, and aqueducts that would flow out of the Grand Coulee reservoir. The irrigation system carried water from Grand Coulee Dam to 66,000 acres of farmland. By 2012, the acreage increased more than ten fold to 671,000.

On December 6, 1935, the first bucket of concrete was poured onto the dam site. To prevent the possibility of cracking, concrete was poured into hundreds of 50 foot square blocks every 72 hours. After each pour, workers would scrub the concrete with wide brushes to remove scum. Millions of cubic yards were poured, and in February 1938, the foundation was completed 14 months ahead of schedule.

Of the many public works projects of the New Deal, Grand Coulee Dam loomed largest in America's imagination during the darkest days of the Depression. It promised to fulfill President Franklin Roosevelt's vision for a "planned promised land" where hard-working farm families would finally be free from the drought and dislocation caused by the elements.