290218 Lewis & Clark: A Great President Appears on the Scene (Part 1 of 3)

After sending the broadcast technicians out to Portland, Oregon, for a remote broadcast of the Portland Symphony Orchestra on February 11th, the Great Northern Railway and their compatriots at NBC reverted to the first-season standard of dramatizing the history of the exploration and settling of the Pacific Northwest. The February 18, 1929, episode of Empire Builders featured the first of a three-part series on the western exploration adventures of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. The epic journey of the “Corps of Discovery” was made at the behest of President Thomas Jefferson. Among other motivations, the goal was to explore, map, and report on the natural resources of the newly gained Louisiana Purchase territory (which was determined to extend west to the Rocky Mountains). Lewis and Clark pressed on to the mouth of the Columbia River and the Pacific Ocean.

No recording exists of this broadcast, and as yet, no continuity (script) for this trilogy has been located either. However, we do have a few forms of documentation from the time of the broadcast to illuminate certain details.

For many years, the Great Northern Railway produced a small publication called the “Goat” [beginning in the early 1920’s, the corporate logo of the GN utilized a Rocky Mountain goat]. This publication was designed primarily to inform passenger and freight agents of news concerning the railway and its business partners. It was not an employee’s magazine, but it could probably be called a “house organ.” The Great Northern Goat was published on an inconsistent but mostly monthly basis from March, 1924, until the merger in 1970 that formed Burlington Northern. The February, 1929, issue of the Great Northern Goat contained a few paragraphs about the Empire Builders broadcast of February 18^th:

 “This program told dramatically how President Jefferson sent Livingston and Monroe to Paris to negotiate for the purchase of New Orleans and how the French practically threw all of Louisiana into their laps. Then the program took up the journey of Lewis and Clark, it told of their exciting adventures near the Great Falls of the Missouri, of the meeting of Sacajawea and the members of her own tribe after years of separation, and of the party’s arrival on the Pacific Coast.”

A newspaper column appearing in the Christian Science Monitor, under the title “The Listener Speaks,” gave a Tuesday recap of the previous evening’s Empire Builders program. In reviewing the broadcast, the article stated “the most thrilling incident was the cloudburst at Great Falls, in which their encampment was entirely swept away. The ‘Old Timer’ left them, in his description, comfortably established in the good graces of the Shoshone Indians with whom they will remain until next Monday. They will then travel back by the Overland route.”

The article added, “at the conclusion of the story a long telegram from the Governor of Montana in which the progress of that State was clearly set forth was read as an interesting commentary upon the rapid development in the country explored by Lewis and Clark.”

[CSM citation courtesy of radio historian R.R. King]