A Rolling History of Americans on the Move
Ships, trains, cars, planes -- a look at how transportation systems have helped keep a nation going. Transcript of radio broadcast:
10 January 2010
VOICE ONE:
Welcome to THIS IS AMERICA, in VOA Special English. I'm Shirley Griffith.
VOICE TWO:
And I'm Faith Lapidus. This week, travel back in time to explore the history of transportation in the United States.
(MUSIC)
VOICE ONE:
In eighteen-hundred, Americans elected Thomas Jefferson as their third president. Jefferson had a wish. He wanted to discover a waterway that crossed from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific. He wanted to build a system of trade that connected people throughout the country. At that time the United States did not stretch all the way across the continent.
A drawing of Lewis and ClarkJefferson proposed that a group of explorers travel across North America in search of such a waterway. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark led the exploration west from eighteen-oh-three to eighteen-oh-six. They discovered that the Rocky Mountains divided the land. They also found no coast-to-coast waterway.
So Jefferson decided that a different transportation system would best connect American communities. This system involved roads, rivers and railroads. It also included the digging of waterways.
VOICE TWO:
By the middle of the eighteen-hundreds, dirt roads had been built in parts of the nation. The use of river steamboats increased. Boats also traveled along man-made canals which strengthened local economies.
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