Road Trip Stories: The History

In today's episode: Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve.

On the vast Kansas prairie, Fort Larned stood as a monument to America's conflicted soul. It was a fortress built to project military power and conquer the Plains tribes , yet it was also tasked with keeping peace by distributing food and supplies to them. This episode explores the fort's paradoxical role as both a war machine and a diplomatic outpost , a flashpoint o...

In today's episode: Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve.

Once, a sea of grass covered 170 million acres of North America, only to be nearly erased in a single generation. Today, less than 4% remains. We journey to the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, a landscape saved not by wisdom, but by a geological accident that defeated the plow. Here, we uncover stories of First Peoples, ambitious cattle barons, and the 70-year po...

Part One of our six-part series on the history that led to the National World War One Memorial.

In nineteen-fourteen, the great powers of Europe believed they were at the height of civilization. Yet a web of alliances, a relentless arms race, and simmering nationalism created a powder keg. We explore how the assassination of a single archduke in Sarajevo could act as the spark that ignited a global inferno, shattering the i...

From a boy born into slavery and kidnapped by raiders , George Washington Carver rose to become a world-famous scientist. This single episode chronicles his entire journey: his youth as the "Plant Doctor," his revolutionary work at Tuskegee helping farmers escape the debt of the sharecropping system, and the painful paradox of his fame in a segregated America. Finally, we explore the creation of his National Monument—a pol...

Part three of our series on Pea Ridge National Military Park.

As dawn breaks on the second day, the tide turns. While the victorious Confederates at Elkhorn Tavern find themselves starving and out of ammunition, the Union army, consolidated and resupplied, unleashes the war's largest artillery bombardment. We witness how a gambler's desperate plan comes due, leading to a crushing Union victory that would permanently secure ...

Part two of our series on Pea Ridge National Military Park.

The battle for Pea Ridge erupts in chaos. With the Confederate army split by a mountain, two separate battles rage simultaneously. On one front, a shocking series of battlefield deaths decapitates the Confederate command, turning victory into a rout. Just miles away at Elkhorn Tavern, the other Confederate wing wins a bloody, hard-fought victory, seizing the vital ...

Part one of our series on Pea Ridge National Military Park.

In the winter of eighteen sixty-two, the fate of Missouri hangs in the balance. The Union sends a methodical engineer, Samuel Curtis, to crush the rebellion. He faces a fractured Confederate command led by the flamboyant Earl Van Dorn, who launches an audacious gamble: a forced march through a blizzard to strike the Union rear, abandoning his food and ammunition to...

Part three of our series on Fort Smith National Historic Site.

This episode opens the case files of Judge Parker's court, where the line between history and myth was often blurred. We explore how the press transformed a convicted horse thief like Belle Starr into the romantic "Bandit Queen," and contrast her manufactured fame with the brutal reality of remorseless killers like Cherokee Bill. The series concludes with the cl...

Part two of our series on Fort Smith National Historic Site.

After the military departs, Fort Smith becomes home to a federal court with an impossible mission: bring law to the 74,000 square miles of "Hell on the Border" known as Indian Territory. This episode introduces the relentless Judge Isaac C. Parker, the man sent to tame the chaos , and legendary deputy marshals like Bass Reeves, the long arm of the law in a dangero...

Part one of our series on Fort Smith National Historic Site.

This episode explores the birth of Fort Smith, an outpost built on the American frontier to manage a violent conflict the U.S. government itself created. The story follows the fort from its origins as a lonely stockade to its role as a tragic witness to the Trail of Tears, and finally, as a contested prize during the Civil War. It is a story of how a tool of feder...