Curiosity (2011) s01e06 Episode Script
What's Beneath America?
Sheen : The U.
S.
A.
Richest nation on Earth.
Hard work and ingenuity earned us that title.
But we also got lucky.
This country has natural resources to spare.
How they came to be here is an ancient story and an unbelievably violent one.
l'm in California, where we get an occasional jolt to remind us this that country is not built on solid ground.
Down there under my feet, there's a fiery world of chaos, explosions, collisions, contortions, upheaval -- all on a scale we can hardly imagine.
How did those extreme subterranean forces and the cataclysmic climatic events above ground shape this continent? How did grinding sheets of ice miles thick flatten the middle of the country? What great pressures belched metals up to the surface from deep below? How were entire mountain ranges thrust up by colliding tectonic plates? And how did all that violence give us the raw materials to ultimately built this land of power and bounty? Because it did just that.
lt built our cities, our rich farmland, our waterways, our factories, and lots of the things they make.
We're going to take you across America from the newest land out here in the Pacific to some of the oldest land near the Great Lakes and along the Atlantic Seaboard.
We're going to find out just how this country's savage geological past made it great.
First stop -- Hawaii, where the same geological forces that created America are still bubbling and exploding today.
They're building the most dangerous volcano in America.
This 1 4,000-foot mountain is constantly growing Molded by forces that have shaped and reshaped the Earth over the last 4 1 /2 billion years.
As heat rises up from deep inside the Earth, it melts rock and blasts it through the crust.
When it cools, it hardens into a black basalt crust that builds up over time, layer upon layer.
lt has created almost a thousand acres of new land in less than half a century.
2 1 /2 thousand miles to the east, on the mainland, is much older land.
Long-dormant volcanoes have left golden riches buried in the California rocks.
California is the richest state in the U.
S.
, and its good fortune began with its gold.
Todd Bracken has been seeking and finding that gold for 20 years.
This is the most exciting part of my gold mining yet.
This is a 43-gram natural California gold nugget.
Sheen : A nugget that's worth a cool $2,500.
California's gold is as old as her hills.
lt's been here for over 1 00 million years.
lt was forced up to the surface when the entire continent was on the move.
California rests atop one of seven massive tectonic plates that make up the Earth's crust.
Blazing heat from the Earth's core, up to 1 0,000 degrees, keeps those plates in constant motion.
1 50 million years ago, the North American and Pacific plates collided.
The force of that impact pushed up a chain of volcanoes along what is now the west coast of the United States And the Sierra Nevada mountain range was born.
This process had another effect.
lt seeded rocks throughout California with treasure.
When tectonic plates smash into each other, things get hot and turn solid rock into magma.
Water, super-heated by the magma, ripped upward through the cracks in the California crust, carrying gold from deep within the planet.
When the liquid cooled, the gold solidified into flakes and nuggets inside the quartz-rich veins that lace the Sierra Nevada.
Good news for California and for this modern-day prospector, who's also a jeweler.
Many people like the idea of buying my jewelry, because they know that it's mined right out of the ground here in California and handmade right here in California.
Sheen : Todd prospects for gold in the shadow of the original 49ers.
The California Gold Rush lasted only 1 5 busy years.
300,000 prospectors from all over the world scooped up more than 7 0 million ounces.
At today's prices, their total haul would be worth $1 30 billion.
California gold helped the Union win the war.
lt also founded the Hearst and Stanford dynasties.
So, how exactly do you find the gold? The power of water erodes the rock, freeing the imbedded gold and sweeping it downstream.
A boulder like this slows the river water down, creating a low-pressure system behind it.
And when gravel fills in around it, it sucks and holds the gold in behind boulders like that.
So this is the ideal situation to find gold.
Two years ago, we found 1 6 ounces in the course of about six weeks.
Sheen : Six weeks of work.
A $27,000 payday.
Todd's prospecting methods haven't changed from those used by the 49ers.
This is gold panning.
First, you pour your material into the pan, and you give it quite a few shakes.
And what this does is settle the heavier gold down to the bottom of the pan.
lf you pan it too fast, you run the risk of losing the gold.
Gold.
One, two, three.
Yeah, that's a nice piece.
Sheen : The geological forces that shot gold into the Sierra Nevadas gave America more than mineral riches.
They built our magnificent landscapes, too.
800 miles east and 80 million years later, they created the greatest mountain range in the U.
S.
For tens of millions of years, the North American plate continued to grind up and over the Pacific plate.
That relentless force contorted and buckled the land, thrusting up the Rocky Mountains five miles into the sky.
The American Rockies run for 1 ,500 miles, from Canada to New Mexico.
To the east, they towered above what would become the Powder River Basin in Wyoming.
Now a dry prairie, this was once a feted swamp -- the surprising source of another one of America's natural treasures.
Coal.
Sheen : This ever-restless planet possesses awesome power.
lt can move mountains, divert the course of mighty rivers, and transform millions of square miles of dry land into a vast, simmering swamp.
How did millions of years of rotting vegetation in just such a swamp turn into America's most abundant source of fuel? Coal fuels half of the power stations in America.
Almost half of all that coal comes from a single valley in Wyoming -- the Powder River Basin.
lt covers over 20,000 square miles of flat, dry prairie.
Coal from the Powder River Basin yields enough electricity for one in five American homes.
lt's nice to be able to help millions of people out, you know, in their daily life so they can see at night.
Alarm clocks can go off in the morning.
They can fix their breakfast.
Sheen : Dennis Rogge operates a shovel that loads the mine's gargantuan trucks.
Each one holds 250 tons.
There's about 35 ton of coal in the bucket.
That's about seven bucketfuls in a truck, so And it goes up in silos, through crushers into the silos, and then they load it out on the trains from there.
Sheen : Lynne Huskinson drives one of the largest loaders in America.
lt's as high as a two-story house.
Actually, the shovels are more efficient than the loaders, but the loader can get into a tighter place, 'cause it has articulation.
Sheen : Next step -- you need a mile-long train to put the coal in.
Lots of coal.
Like, sometimes 5, 6, 7 trains, 1 1 0 coal cars.
That's a good day, l think.
l love my job.
l guess l'm guilty of kind of taking it for granted, because it's just something l've always done.
l started when l was 1 9 years old.
l'm a native of Wyoming.
lt's a beautiful state.
Sheen : Coal was created here 55 million years ago.
Back then, this place looked very different.
lt was a giant bowl, surrounded on all sides by mountains.
The climate was radically different then, too -- subtropical, like Florida.
Warm and wet.
Rivers draining the newly formed Rockies drowned the land.
The basin filled up and turned into a swamp, teeming with life.
You won't find them in Wyoming today, but back then, there were alligators, flamingos, and the ancestors of today's redwood trees.
When trees and plants die and fall into a swamp, they can't decompose, and, instead, turn into peat.
Over millions of years, the peat compacts to form coal.
This piece of coal that l picked up here actually has a piece of amber in it, which is fossilized tree resin.
About 1 foot of coal takes about 7 to 1 0 feet of peat to do that.
We have appro ximately 1 00 feet of coal here that derive from that peat that accumulated in the swamp over those years.
ln this whole deposit -- the Powder River Basin -- there's billions of tons of coal.
Sheen : Blasting is an easy way to get at these unusually shallow coal bins.
They cover an area twice the size of New Jersey.
A legacy from the Earth that keeps America's lights on and appliances and computers humming.
Enough here for at least another 1 00 years.
And that's not the only fuel we've got under our American feet.
We've also gotoil.
From Alaska to Texas, California to Pennsylvania.
But this time, the raw ingredients for the fuel were not dead plants but dead animals.
360 million years ago, 3/4 of the American continent was under a shallow sea.
The ancient sea swarmed with life.
As trillions of these sea creatures died, their remains built up as thick organic sludge on the seabed.
When the sludge was buried by layers of sediment and pressure-cooked for millions of years inside the Earth, it was transformed into oil.
Heading further east, we reach the fastest-growing oil region in the U.
S.
-- North Dakota.
Here at the Bakken Oil Field, there are 5,400 wells Each with around 1 00 workers.
l think it's great putting the American citizens to work.
lt's millions of people that are having jobs from this and doing our economy great.
Sheen : Derek has worked on oil rigs for the last 20 years.
Once you get mud in your blood, it just doesn't come out.
[ chuckles .]
Hopefully l get to teach my children this trade and they enjoy it as much as l do.
Sheen : The oil here is trapped inside porous rock that's more than two miles deep.
When the drill penetrates the oil-rich layers, the rock is shattered by small explosions And oil is forced up to the surface.
With such heavy and dangerous equipment, teamwork helps keep the men safe.
Best part of the job is the people you work with.
Everybody on a rig is important, because no matter what, if that one person makes a mistake, it could jeopardize somebody's life somewhere else on the rig.
Anything there gets loose -- if it hits you, it's gonna hurt.
Depending on the size, it may permanently injure you.
lt may kill you.
Sheen : The oil reserves beneath North Dakota will keep these guys in work for at least 50 years.
lt really makes you feel good going home at the end of the day, knowing that you've done something good for your country and trying to supply for them and a good day's work.
Sheen : Oil is turned into a vast range of products, none more essential than gas for our cars.
American cars and trucks swallow 378 million gallons of gas a day.
That's more than a gallon for each American citizen -- every man, woman, and child.
Gold, oil, and coal -- all valuable natural resources that lie beneath America.
As our eastward trip continues, we'll find another lucky break.
The super-fertile soil of the Midwest, where this nation of farmers found the perfect land.
Sheen : Stretching from Kansas to the Dakotas, lowa to Ohio, is what's called the fruited plain in ''America the Beautiful.
'' The nation's breadbasket.
Kevin Aves farms his lllinois land like his father and grandfather before him.
Well, it's interesting living out here and farming for a living.
My family has been doing it over 1 00 years.
There is great abundance here.
Sheen : The fine-grain prairie soil is perfect for wheat, corn, and soybeans.
Well, this soil is very highly productive.
lt's a silty clay-loam soil.
lt's probably 5% or 6% organic matter.
Has great water-holding ability.
This soil is very dark and just grows great crops to help feed lllinois and the world.
Sheen : There's a 2-million-year-old secret behind the richness of this soil.
Right around then, the Great lce Age arrived.
85% of the area we now call the Midwest was cloaked in ice.
Glaciers up to a mile high moved relentlessly across the land.
They ripped up rock and pulverized anything that stood in their way.
This bulldozing effect ground the rock into dust.
Almost 2 million years later, when the ice sheets finally retreated, they exposed what they had crushed.
Rock dust, rich in minerals, was blown across the land.
And that's why the Midwestern soil is so very fertile.
We had several glaciers come through this area that helped level the soil and grind the stones into soil.
The giant glaciers had a further beneficial effect.
The heavy ice flattened and leveled the landscape.
To work these flat expanses, American ingenuity created mega machines.
This increased productivity by leaps and bounds to feed our ever-growing population.
l think, as a farmer, a lot of times we take the land for granted, but we're very fortunate to live in this rich, fertile part of the country.
lt's something that is a blessing.
Sheen : The legacy of the Great lce Age didn't end with these flat, fertile fields.
When the glaciers melted, they unleashed billions of gallons of water.
lt surged across the land.
The torrents rerouted ancient rivers, eventually creating one mighty river -- the Mississippi.
Today, it's a critical commercial thoroughfare.
The Mississippi connects the agricultural, industrial, and resource-rich northern and central states to the Gulf of Mexico.
Water from 31 states flows into this river.
lts million-square-mile watershed drains 40% of the U.
S.
30,000 barges work the river.
Each year, they transport more than $20 billion worth of American goods and commodities -- steel, cement, coal, and wheat.
These products are going all over the world.
lt's good for America, you know? lf it comes out of America and it goes somewhere else, then it's good for America, and l'm all for that.
Sheen : Longer than the ill-fated Titanic and more than a little tricky to navigate, each barge stretches 1 ,000 feet or more from bow to stern.
For 28 days straight, the barges are home sweet home to the men who work them.
Our boat's like -- it's a pride thing, you know.
We take care of each other.
Actually, we love each other.
lt's like a family.
Yeah, a family thing.
We eat at the dinner table together, spend Christmas together, Thanksgivings together.
lt is a lifestyle.
l love it right now.
You see pleasure boats, people waving.
We wave back.
August this year will be 1 3 years that l been on the river.
Sheen : Right now, the crew of the Virginia lngram is navigating the upper reaches of the Mississippi, north of St.
Louis, Missouri.
A fully laden barge like this needs an 1 8-man crew.
We're the eyes and ears of the pilot, you know? He can't see where he's at, especially with these covered tops here.
They can't see the corners.
The lock's 1 1 0 wide, and the tow's 1 05 wide.
So what l see l relate to on the radio, and he's got trust in me.
lf he don't trust me, we could have a catastrophe.
We're a little cog in a big wheel, but, you know, we try to do our best, work safely, and keep things going like they should.
Sheen : Navigating the river on a mega barge takes enormous skill.
ln 1 996, a barge this size lost its steering and demolished a riverside shopping mall.
Pushed a lot of tonnage.
We've got about 28,000 tons that we're shoving up through the river system.
And right now, probably about 1 ,000 feet to stop.
l like my job.
l like being around the water for some reason.
l don't know.
l've always liked that since l was a kid, being around water.
lt's a cheap means of transportation.
lt's what helped build this country.
Sheen : When these cargoes reach their destination, they're off-loaded, bound for other parts of the U.
S.
and the rest of the world.
All made possible by melting glaciers.
Off the river and heading east again, the next stop is Michigan.
lt's a state endowed with what is arguably America's greatest natural resource.
lron.
Michigan's iron drove America's industrial revolution and literally built modern America.
Sheen : America has a backbone of solid steel.
lt's built our bridges, railroads, ships, tanks, factories, cars, and aircraft.
For centuries, we've dug, carved, blasted great bands of iron ore right out of the ground.
But what made American iron so accessible and how did it get there in the first place? The story of America's iron begins 1 1 billion years ago.
Earth did not exist.
But iron-rich dust left behind from an ancient exploding star began to circle and collide in space.
5 1 /2 billion years later, our planet was formed.
Heavy elements, which included most of the iron, sank to form the Earth's molten core.
But some iron remained topside, trapped in rock in the crust of the ancient planet.
A rich concentration of these rocks is here in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
Michigan mines produce a quarter of America's iron ore.
We're driving down a road in an active mine, and so a lot of the rocks in this area have already been extracted out.
Sheen : Like our underground stores of oil, the iron deposits here date back to when much of our continent was covered in water.
We'd have to go back 1 .
85 billion years.
At that time, there would have been a shallow sea in this area.
So we'd be under water right now.
Sheen : The ancient sea ebbed and flowed for a billion years.
Over that time, iron from deeper in the Earth's crust came up through cracks in the seabed, carried by super-heated steam.
The iron particles sank and settled on the ocean floor, mixed between layers of sand.
These are the red banded iron deposits found in this Michigan mine today.
We know from our exploration drilling that we have at least 3,000 feet of continuous iron formation.
And in most of the areas here, we actually have not drilled down to the bottom of that iron formation yet.
What we got right here is the banded iron formation.
lt's a lot harder.
lt wears our bits out, takes longer to drill.
The numbers tells us how deep we are in the hole, so we don't lose track of what depth we're at.
Sheen : This is Dearborn, Michigan, the site of Henry Ford's original steel plant.
Here, iron mined from the banded iron ore is transformed into steel.
24 automobiles can be made from one single slab of this steel.
Turning iron into steel is not for the faint-hearted.
Carbon and other elements need to be added at extreme temperatures -- up to 3,500 degrees -- 7 times hotter than a home oven.
That's why we wear aluminized jackets, shrouds, spats.
lt can be pretty frightening at times, because we have the sparks shooting at you.
Sometimes you may get a drop of iron coming your way.
So you have to really pay attention to what you're doing.
Nothing to play with.
Sheen : lron is one of Earth's heaviest metals.
lt's so heavy, it sinks to the bottom of the furnace, leaving the impurities, which are lighter, behind.
We have a lot of pressure on the furnace, and the iron is heavy.
And so when you open the hole, iron is the first thing that comes out.
Sheen : More than 1 1 billion years after its creation, the iron is returned to its liquid state.
Then the workers add metal alloys to produce steel, which is much stronger and more malleable than pure iron.
l feel very fortunate that America has given us all the great resources of iron to make steel, so we can give them to the rest of the world.
Henry Ford started this a hundred years ago.
We still have some of the original building.
l have great pride to be able to work in this place that Henry Ford started.
Sheen : From the iron ore beneath our feet, American steel has found its way into millions of automobiles.
lron has been used to make everything from skyscraper girders to fire hydrants.
Actually, it's kind of funny.
We'll drive down the road, and l know that we made a part for that vehicle or we made steel for that appliance, and l can actually say that l was part of that.
Sheen : As we continue heading east, we come to a mountain range that, like the Rockies, stretches down the entire length of the continent.
Only these mountains are much older and were much taller.
They were a critical factor in the success of the earliest European settlers.
The Appalachians.
Sheen : America, the most powerful land on Earth.
Solid as a rock, right? Wrong.
Go back a few hundred million years, and this continent was being battered, bent, and shunted around by forces almost impossible to imagine.
What knocked our continent into the shape we know today and created the oldest mountains we have? lt all happened 300 million years ago when the ancient continents of Europe and North Africa smashed into the forerunner of North America And formed a new supercontinent -- Pangaea.
The impact was even greater than the geological collision that formed the Rockies.
lt forced up one of the tallest mountain ranges that has ever been, although you wouldn't know it today.
The ground here is still moving, shifting along fault lines left over from that primeval collision [ siren wailing .]
and occasionally creating earthquakes, like the one in Virginia, felt over much of the eastern U.
S.
in August 201 1 .
When they were first formed, the Appalachians were jagged and higher than the Himalayas.
Like all old mountains, they have eroded down to gentler slopes, little more than hills running 2,000 miles from Alabama to Canada.
They may be old, but they still yield natural riches.
The northern end of the range dominates the interior of Maine.
Here, the worn-down mountains are shrouded in 1 7-million acres of forest.
Trees cover 80% of the state.
Dick Slike manages the forest.
lf you look at the state of Maine and think of its geologic history, of course, the mountains were built ages ago.
They're ancient, ancient mountains, and the bedrock is granite.
Sheen : Over time, that rock has eroded and donated its valuable minerals to the forest soil.
And, of course, then you have the trees dropping the leaves, which becomes humus.
And so the soil becomes a thin layer of inorganic soil topped by a thick layer of leaves and needles and things that become an organic component.
Sheen : Maine's logging industry is worth $4 billion a year And it's been important economically for hundreds of years.
My father was a logger.
His father before him was a logger.
His father before him was a logger.
They basically started logging when they came over here from Scotland and England, so it goes back a long ways.
Sheen : The forests that grow on the Appalachian slopes up and down the eastern U.
S.
were a vital resource for both Native Americans and early settlers from Europe.
l think when people came across on the wooden ships, instantly people that had worked wood in Scandinavia or Europe saw the potential.
They built homes out of the wood.
lt was a basic building block that got people started.
Sheen : The first Europeans arrived in Maine in 1 609.
The Appalachian forest gave them not only the means to survive but to expand.
Started to build.
They took the trees down all over the state of Maine, pushed them down the rivers to Bangor and those places, sawed them into boards, and basically built America with those boards.
Sheen : Boards from Appalachian timber are still used to build American homes, churches, and railroad ties.
And Maine's logging industry supports more than 50,000 jobs.
l honestly believe that you couldn't live without logging, because you basically build your houses out of it.
A lot of people keep warm by it, and it's real important.
l think the forests of Maine will definitely help give America its future and its shape.
There's always going to be vast forest production here.
Sheen : Appalachian rock underpins more than just economic success.
lt's the solid platform that allowed New York City to reach for the sky.
Sheen : Along the Atlantic coast, mountains are so eroded that you would hardly know they're there.
But the bedrock remains and plays a surprisingly important role.
lt gives a solid base for the skyscrapers of Manhattan.
The higher these buildings rise into the sky, the more they have to be rooted into the earth beneath.
This is ground zero, site of the new World Trade Center -- the biggest civil-engineering project in America.
Here, the hard, eroded bedrock of the Appalachians will soon support seven soaring towers.
The first -- 52 stories high -- has already been built.
Engineers have dug over 1 00 feet down into the ancient bedrock.
Right now, we are about 7 4 feet below sea level.
So, we're standing on a rock excavation, and the natural bedrock was probably 1 0 or 1 5 feet higher than where l'm standing right now.
lt's actually a very hard rock.
Sheen : lt was originally soft sedimentary rock and was transformed into hard crystalline rock when the continents collided.
The heat and the pressure changed the rock from the original components into this crystalline rock that we have now that allows us to put these building loads on top of it.
Sheen : There's no question there would have been a settlement here and probably a city, but not this city -- not without its natural platform for building up.
l grew up here, and l live here.
lt's great.
But just think of the history of Manhattan, you know.
lt's where it all started.
America began, yeah.
The pilgrims came to other parts, but they all came to New York because it was a great place to build a city.
Sheen : The hard bedrock meant that some of the first-ever skyscrapers were built here.
And today, the city has the most famous skyscrapers in the world.
You've got the Chrysler Building, and then, of course, we've got the Empire State Building.
Everyone thinks of New York, they think of the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building.
They're all sitting on bedrock.
Sheen : But Manhattan's bedrock isn't totally flat.
ln some places, it curves downward, and the depressions have been filled in with softer, younger rock.
Under Greenwich Village, a dip in the bedrock below is mirrored above ground by a dip in the skyline.
ln Midtown, where the bedrock is nearer the surface, the skyscrapers reappear.
A 21 st-century American city built upon foundations created 300 million years ago.
When the Appalachians were thrown up, they were the greatest mountains on Earth.
1 00 million years later, the supercontinent, Pangaea, split apart.
North America, in more or less the same shape we know it today, was born.
ln our journey across America, we've found tremendous riches that have come from beneath our feet -- volcanic outpourings of lava in our most western state Gold that helped create California's wealth Coal and oil from living plants and animals that once thrived in ancient seas and swamps lron from which we have built our cars, bridges, and railroads Timber to build our houses And the rock foundations of our mighty skyscrapers.
Over billions of years, the land that was to become the U.
S.
A.
was endowed with greater geological riches than any other nation on Earth.
lt's taken centuries of invention, industry, and skill for us to dig, blast, and tease those resources -- what lies beneath America -- out of the ground.
Nature's raw power and the courage of the American people have been the unstoppable forces that made us the rich and powerful nation we are today.
S.
A.
Richest nation on Earth.
Hard work and ingenuity earned us that title.
But we also got lucky.
This country has natural resources to spare.
How they came to be here is an ancient story and an unbelievably violent one.
l'm in California, where we get an occasional jolt to remind us this that country is not built on solid ground.
Down there under my feet, there's a fiery world of chaos, explosions, collisions, contortions, upheaval -- all on a scale we can hardly imagine.
How did those extreme subterranean forces and the cataclysmic climatic events above ground shape this continent? How did grinding sheets of ice miles thick flatten the middle of the country? What great pressures belched metals up to the surface from deep below? How were entire mountain ranges thrust up by colliding tectonic plates? And how did all that violence give us the raw materials to ultimately built this land of power and bounty? Because it did just that.
lt built our cities, our rich farmland, our waterways, our factories, and lots of the things they make.
We're going to take you across America from the newest land out here in the Pacific to some of the oldest land near the Great Lakes and along the Atlantic Seaboard.
We're going to find out just how this country's savage geological past made it great.
First stop -- Hawaii, where the same geological forces that created America are still bubbling and exploding today.
They're building the most dangerous volcano in America.
This 1 4,000-foot mountain is constantly growing Molded by forces that have shaped and reshaped the Earth over the last 4 1 /2 billion years.
As heat rises up from deep inside the Earth, it melts rock and blasts it through the crust.
When it cools, it hardens into a black basalt crust that builds up over time, layer upon layer.
lt has created almost a thousand acres of new land in less than half a century.
2 1 /2 thousand miles to the east, on the mainland, is much older land.
Long-dormant volcanoes have left golden riches buried in the California rocks.
California is the richest state in the U.
S.
, and its good fortune began with its gold.
Todd Bracken has been seeking and finding that gold for 20 years.
This is the most exciting part of my gold mining yet.
This is a 43-gram natural California gold nugget.
Sheen : A nugget that's worth a cool $2,500.
California's gold is as old as her hills.
lt's been here for over 1 00 million years.
lt was forced up to the surface when the entire continent was on the move.
California rests atop one of seven massive tectonic plates that make up the Earth's crust.
Blazing heat from the Earth's core, up to 1 0,000 degrees, keeps those plates in constant motion.
1 50 million years ago, the North American and Pacific plates collided.
The force of that impact pushed up a chain of volcanoes along what is now the west coast of the United States And the Sierra Nevada mountain range was born.
This process had another effect.
lt seeded rocks throughout California with treasure.
When tectonic plates smash into each other, things get hot and turn solid rock into magma.
Water, super-heated by the magma, ripped upward through the cracks in the California crust, carrying gold from deep within the planet.
When the liquid cooled, the gold solidified into flakes and nuggets inside the quartz-rich veins that lace the Sierra Nevada.
Good news for California and for this modern-day prospector, who's also a jeweler.
Many people like the idea of buying my jewelry, because they know that it's mined right out of the ground here in California and handmade right here in California.
Sheen : Todd prospects for gold in the shadow of the original 49ers.
The California Gold Rush lasted only 1 5 busy years.
300,000 prospectors from all over the world scooped up more than 7 0 million ounces.
At today's prices, their total haul would be worth $1 30 billion.
California gold helped the Union win the war.
lt also founded the Hearst and Stanford dynasties.
So, how exactly do you find the gold? The power of water erodes the rock, freeing the imbedded gold and sweeping it downstream.
A boulder like this slows the river water down, creating a low-pressure system behind it.
And when gravel fills in around it, it sucks and holds the gold in behind boulders like that.
So this is the ideal situation to find gold.
Two years ago, we found 1 6 ounces in the course of about six weeks.
Sheen : Six weeks of work.
A $27,000 payday.
Todd's prospecting methods haven't changed from those used by the 49ers.
This is gold panning.
First, you pour your material into the pan, and you give it quite a few shakes.
And what this does is settle the heavier gold down to the bottom of the pan.
lf you pan it too fast, you run the risk of losing the gold.
Gold.
One, two, three.
Yeah, that's a nice piece.
Sheen : The geological forces that shot gold into the Sierra Nevadas gave America more than mineral riches.
They built our magnificent landscapes, too.
800 miles east and 80 million years later, they created the greatest mountain range in the U.
S.
For tens of millions of years, the North American plate continued to grind up and over the Pacific plate.
That relentless force contorted and buckled the land, thrusting up the Rocky Mountains five miles into the sky.
The American Rockies run for 1 ,500 miles, from Canada to New Mexico.
To the east, they towered above what would become the Powder River Basin in Wyoming.
Now a dry prairie, this was once a feted swamp -- the surprising source of another one of America's natural treasures.
Coal.
Sheen : This ever-restless planet possesses awesome power.
lt can move mountains, divert the course of mighty rivers, and transform millions of square miles of dry land into a vast, simmering swamp.
How did millions of years of rotting vegetation in just such a swamp turn into America's most abundant source of fuel? Coal fuels half of the power stations in America.
Almost half of all that coal comes from a single valley in Wyoming -- the Powder River Basin.
lt covers over 20,000 square miles of flat, dry prairie.
Coal from the Powder River Basin yields enough electricity for one in five American homes.
lt's nice to be able to help millions of people out, you know, in their daily life so they can see at night.
Alarm clocks can go off in the morning.
They can fix their breakfast.
Sheen : Dennis Rogge operates a shovel that loads the mine's gargantuan trucks.
Each one holds 250 tons.
There's about 35 ton of coal in the bucket.
That's about seven bucketfuls in a truck, so And it goes up in silos, through crushers into the silos, and then they load it out on the trains from there.
Sheen : Lynne Huskinson drives one of the largest loaders in America.
lt's as high as a two-story house.
Actually, the shovels are more efficient than the loaders, but the loader can get into a tighter place, 'cause it has articulation.
Sheen : Next step -- you need a mile-long train to put the coal in.
Lots of coal.
Like, sometimes 5, 6, 7 trains, 1 1 0 coal cars.
That's a good day, l think.
l love my job.
l guess l'm guilty of kind of taking it for granted, because it's just something l've always done.
l started when l was 1 9 years old.
l'm a native of Wyoming.
lt's a beautiful state.
Sheen : Coal was created here 55 million years ago.
Back then, this place looked very different.
lt was a giant bowl, surrounded on all sides by mountains.
The climate was radically different then, too -- subtropical, like Florida.
Warm and wet.
Rivers draining the newly formed Rockies drowned the land.
The basin filled up and turned into a swamp, teeming with life.
You won't find them in Wyoming today, but back then, there were alligators, flamingos, and the ancestors of today's redwood trees.
When trees and plants die and fall into a swamp, they can't decompose, and, instead, turn into peat.
Over millions of years, the peat compacts to form coal.
This piece of coal that l picked up here actually has a piece of amber in it, which is fossilized tree resin.
About 1 foot of coal takes about 7 to 1 0 feet of peat to do that.
We have appro ximately 1 00 feet of coal here that derive from that peat that accumulated in the swamp over those years.
ln this whole deposit -- the Powder River Basin -- there's billions of tons of coal.
Sheen : Blasting is an easy way to get at these unusually shallow coal bins.
They cover an area twice the size of New Jersey.
A legacy from the Earth that keeps America's lights on and appliances and computers humming.
Enough here for at least another 1 00 years.
And that's not the only fuel we've got under our American feet.
We've also gotoil.
From Alaska to Texas, California to Pennsylvania.
But this time, the raw ingredients for the fuel were not dead plants but dead animals.
360 million years ago, 3/4 of the American continent was under a shallow sea.
The ancient sea swarmed with life.
As trillions of these sea creatures died, their remains built up as thick organic sludge on the seabed.
When the sludge was buried by layers of sediment and pressure-cooked for millions of years inside the Earth, it was transformed into oil.
Heading further east, we reach the fastest-growing oil region in the U.
S.
-- North Dakota.
Here at the Bakken Oil Field, there are 5,400 wells Each with around 1 00 workers.
l think it's great putting the American citizens to work.
lt's millions of people that are having jobs from this and doing our economy great.
Sheen : Derek has worked on oil rigs for the last 20 years.
Once you get mud in your blood, it just doesn't come out.
[ chuckles .]
Hopefully l get to teach my children this trade and they enjoy it as much as l do.
Sheen : The oil here is trapped inside porous rock that's more than two miles deep.
When the drill penetrates the oil-rich layers, the rock is shattered by small explosions And oil is forced up to the surface.
With such heavy and dangerous equipment, teamwork helps keep the men safe.
Best part of the job is the people you work with.
Everybody on a rig is important, because no matter what, if that one person makes a mistake, it could jeopardize somebody's life somewhere else on the rig.
Anything there gets loose -- if it hits you, it's gonna hurt.
Depending on the size, it may permanently injure you.
lt may kill you.
Sheen : The oil reserves beneath North Dakota will keep these guys in work for at least 50 years.
lt really makes you feel good going home at the end of the day, knowing that you've done something good for your country and trying to supply for them and a good day's work.
Sheen : Oil is turned into a vast range of products, none more essential than gas for our cars.
American cars and trucks swallow 378 million gallons of gas a day.
That's more than a gallon for each American citizen -- every man, woman, and child.
Gold, oil, and coal -- all valuable natural resources that lie beneath America.
As our eastward trip continues, we'll find another lucky break.
The super-fertile soil of the Midwest, where this nation of farmers found the perfect land.
Sheen : Stretching from Kansas to the Dakotas, lowa to Ohio, is what's called the fruited plain in ''America the Beautiful.
'' The nation's breadbasket.
Kevin Aves farms his lllinois land like his father and grandfather before him.
Well, it's interesting living out here and farming for a living.
My family has been doing it over 1 00 years.
There is great abundance here.
Sheen : The fine-grain prairie soil is perfect for wheat, corn, and soybeans.
Well, this soil is very highly productive.
lt's a silty clay-loam soil.
lt's probably 5% or 6% organic matter.
Has great water-holding ability.
This soil is very dark and just grows great crops to help feed lllinois and the world.
Sheen : There's a 2-million-year-old secret behind the richness of this soil.
Right around then, the Great lce Age arrived.
85% of the area we now call the Midwest was cloaked in ice.
Glaciers up to a mile high moved relentlessly across the land.
They ripped up rock and pulverized anything that stood in their way.
This bulldozing effect ground the rock into dust.
Almost 2 million years later, when the ice sheets finally retreated, they exposed what they had crushed.
Rock dust, rich in minerals, was blown across the land.
And that's why the Midwestern soil is so very fertile.
We had several glaciers come through this area that helped level the soil and grind the stones into soil.
The giant glaciers had a further beneficial effect.
The heavy ice flattened and leveled the landscape.
To work these flat expanses, American ingenuity created mega machines.
This increased productivity by leaps and bounds to feed our ever-growing population.
l think, as a farmer, a lot of times we take the land for granted, but we're very fortunate to live in this rich, fertile part of the country.
lt's something that is a blessing.
Sheen : The legacy of the Great lce Age didn't end with these flat, fertile fields.
When the glaciers melted, they unleashed billions of gallons of water.
lt surged across the land.
The torrents rerouted ancient rivers, eventually creating one mighty river -- the Mississippi.
Today, it's a critical commercial thoroughfare.
The Mississippi connects the agricultural, industrial, and resource-rich northern and central states to the Gulf of Mexico.
Water from 31 states flows into this river.
lts million-square-mile watershed drains 40% of the U.
S.
30,000 barges work the river.
Each year, they transport more than $20 billion worth of American goods and commodities -- steel, cement, coal, and wheat.
These products are going all over the world.
lt's good for America, you know? lf it comes out of America and it goes somewhere else, then it's good for America, and l'm all for that.
Sheen : Longer than the ill-fated Titanic and more than a little tricky to navigate, each barge stretches 1 ,000 feet or more from bow to stern.
For 28 days straight, the barges are home sweet home to the men who work them.
Our boat's like -- it's a pride thing, you know.
We take care of each other.
Actually, we love each other.
lt's like a family.
Yeah, a family thing.
We eat at the dinner table together, spend Christmas together, Thanksgivings together.
lt is a lifestyle.
l love it right now.
You see pleasure boats, people waving.
We wave back.
August this year will be 1 3 years that l been on the river.
Sheen : Right now, the crew of the Virginia lngram is navigating the upper reaches of the Mississippi, north of St.
Louis, Missouri.
A fully laden barge like this needs an 1 8-man crew.
We're the eyes and ears of the pilot, you know? He can't see where he's at, especially with these covered tops here.
They can't see the corners.
The lock's 1 1 0 wide, and the tow's 1 05 wide.
So what l see l relate to on the radio, and he's got trust in me.
lf he don't trust me, we could have a catastrophe.
We're a little cog in a big wheel, but, you know, we try to do our best, work safely, and keep things going like they should.
Sheen : Navigating the river on a mega barge takes enormous skill.
ln 1 996, a barge this size lost its steering and demolished a riverside shopping mall.
Pushed a lot of tonnage.
We've got about 28,000 tons that we're shoving up through the river system.
And right now, probably about 1 ,000 feet to stop.
l like my job.
l like being around the water for some reason.
l don't know.
l've always liked that since l was a kid, being around water.
lt's a cheap means of transportation.
lt's what helped build this country.
Sheen : When these cargoes reach their destination, they're off-loaded, bound for other parts of the U.
S.
and the rest of the world.
All made possible by melting glaciers.
Off the river and heading east again, the next stop is Michigan.
lt's a state endowed with what is arguably America's greatest natural resource.
lron.
Michigan's iron drove America's industrial revolution and literally built modern America.
Sheen : America has a backbone of solid steel.
lt's built our bridges, railroads, ships, tanks, factories, cars, and aircraft.
For centuries, we've dug, carved, blasted great bands of iron ore right out of the ground.
But what made American iron so accessible and how did it get there in the first place? The story of America's iron begins 1 1 billion years ago.
Earth did not exist.
But iron-rich dust left behind from an ancient exploding star began to circle and collide in space.
5 1 /2 billion years later, our planet was formed.
Heavy elements, which included most of the iron, sank to form the Earth's molten core.
But some iron remained topside, trapped in rock in the crust of the ancient planet.
A rich concentration of these rocks is here in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
Michigan mines produce a quarter of America's iron ore.
We're driving down a road in an active mine, and so a lot of the rocks in this area have already been extracted out.
Sheen : Like our underground stores of oil, the iron deposits here date back to when much of our continent was covered in water.
We'd have to go back 1 .
85 billion years.
At that time, there would have been a shallow sea in this area.
So we'd be under water right now.
Sheen : The ancient sea ebbed and flowed for a billion years.
Over that time, iron from deeper in the Earth's crust came up through cracks in the seabed, carried by super-heated steam.
The iron particles sank and settled on the ocean floor, mixed between layers of sand.
These are the red banded iron deposits found in this Michigan mine today.
We know from our exploration drilling that we have at least 3,000 feet of continuous iron formation.
And in most of the areas here, we actually have not drilled down to the bottom of that iron formation yet.
What we got right here is the banded iron formation.
lt's a lot harder.
lt wears our bits out, takes longer to drill.
The numbers tells us how deep we are in the hole, so we don't lose track of what depth we're at.
Sheen : This is Dearborn, Michigan, the site of Henry Ford's original steel plant.
Here, iron mined from the banded iron ore is transformed into steel.
24 automobiles can be made from one single slab of this steel.
Turning iron into steel is not for the faint-hearted.
Carbon and other elements need to be added at extreme temperatures -- up to 3,500 degrees -- 7 times hotter than a home oven.
That's why we wear aluminized jackets, shrouds, spats.
lt can be pretty frightening at times, because we have the sparks shooting at you.
Sometimes you may get a drop of iron coming your way.
So you have to really pay attention to what you're doing.
Nothing to play with.
Sheen : lron is one of Earth's heaviest metals.
lt's so heavy, it sinks to the bottom of the furnace, leaving the impurities, which are lighter, behind.
We have a lot of pressure on the furnace, and the iron is heavy.
And so when you open the hole, iron is the first thing that comes out.
Sheen : More than 1 1 billion years after its creation, the iron is returned to its liquid state.
Then the workers add metal alloys to produce steel, which is much stronger and more malleable than pure iron.
l feel very fortunate that America has given us all the great resources of iron to make steel, so we can give them to the rest of the world.
Henry Ford started this a hundred years ago.
We still have some of the original building.
l have great pride to be able to work in this place that Henry Ford started.
Sheen : From the iron ore beneath our feet, American steel has found its way into millions of automobiles.
lron has been used to make everything from skyscraper girders to fire hydrants.
Actually, it's kind of funny.
We'll drive down the road, and l know that we made a part for that vehicle or we made steel for that appliance, and l can actually say that l was part of that.
Sheen : As we continue heading east, we come to a mountain range that, like the Rockies, stretches down the entire length of the continent.
Only these mountains are much older and were much taller.
They were a critical factor in the success of the earliest European settlers.
The Appalachians.
Sheen : America, the most powerful land on Earth.
Solid as a rock, right? Wrong.
Go back a few hundred million years, and this continent was being battered, bent, and shunted around by forces almost impossible to imagine.
What knocked our continent into the shape we know today and created the oldest mountains we have? lt all happened 300 million years ago when the ancient continents of Europe and North Africa smashed into the forerunner of North America And formed a new supercontinent -- Pangaea.
The impact was even greater than the geological collision that formed the Rockies.
lt forced up one of the tallest mountain ranges that has ever been, although you wouldn't know it today.
The ground here is still moving, shifting along fault lines left over from that primeval collision [ siren wailing .]
and occasionally creating earthquakes, like the one in Virginia, felt over much of the eastern U.
S.
in August 201 1 .
When they were first formed, the Appalachians were jagged and higher than the Himalayas.
Like all old mountains, they have eroded down to gentler slopes, little more than hills running 2,000 miles from Alabama to Canada.
They may be old, but they still yield natural riches.
The northern end of the range dominates the interior of Maine.
Here, the worn-down mountains are shrouded in 1 7-million acres of forest.
Trees cover 80% of the state.
Dick Slike manages the forest.
lf you look at the state of Maine and think of its geologic history, of course, the mountains were built ages ago.
They're ancient, ancient mountains, and the bedrock is granite.
Sheen : Over time, that rock has eroded and donated its valuable minerals to the forest soil.
And, of course, then you have the trees dropping the leaves, which becomes humus.
And so the soil becomes a thin layer of inorganic soil topped by a thick layer of leaves and needles and things that become an organic component.
Sheen : Maine's logging industry is worth $4 billion a year And it's been important economically for hundreds of years.
My father was a logger.
His father before him was a logger.
His father before him was a logger.
They basically started logging when they came over here from Scotland and England, so it goes back a long ways.
Sheen : The forests that grow on the Appalachian slopes up and down the eastern U.
S.
were a vital resource for both Native Americans and early settlers from Europe.
l think when people came across on the wooden ships, instantly people that had worked wood in Scandinavia or Europe saw the potential.
They built homes out of the wood.
lt was a basic building block that got people started.
Sheen : The first Europeans arrived in Maine in 1 609.
The Appalachian forest gave them not only the means to survive but to expand.
Started to build.
They took the trees down all over the state of Maine, pushed them down the rivers to Bangor and those places, sawed them into boards, and basically built America with those boards.
Sheen : Boards from Appalachian timber are still used to build American homes, churches, and railroad ties.
And Maine's logging industry supports more than 50,000 jobs.
l honestly believe that you couldn't live without logging, because you basically build your houses out of it.
A lot of people keep warm by it, and it's real important.
l think the forests of Maine will definitely help give America its future and its shape.
There's always going to be vast forest production here.
Sheen : Appalachian rock underpins more than just economic success.
lt's the solid platform that allowed New York City to reach for the sky.
Sheen : Along the Atlantic coast, mountains are so eroded that you would hardly know they're there.
But the bedrock remains and plays a surprisingly important role.
lt gives a solid base for the skyscrapers of Manhattan.
The higher these buildings rise into the sky, the more they have to be rooted into the earth beneath.
This is ground zero, site of the new World Trade Center -- the biggest civil-engineering project in America.
Here, the hard, eroded bedrock of the Appalachians will soon support seven soaring towers.
The first -- 52 stories high -- has already been built.
Engineers have dug over 1 00 feet down into the ancient bedrock.
Right now, we are about 7 4 feet below sea level.
So, we're standing on a rock excavation, and the natural bedrock was probably 1 0 or 1 5 feet higher than where l'm standing right now.
lt's actually a very hard rock.
Sheen : lt was originally soft sedimentary rock and was transformed into hard crystalline rock when the continents collided.
The heat and the pressure changed the rock from the original components into this crystalline rock that we have now that allows us to put these building loads on top of it.
Sheen : There's no question there would have been a settlement here and probably a city, but not this city -- not without its natural platform for building up.
l grew up here, and l live here.
lt's great.
But just think of the history of Manhattan, you know.
lt's where it all started.
America began, yeah.
The pilgrims came to other parts, but they all came to New York because it was a great place to build a city.
Sheen : The hard bedrock meant that some of the first-ever skyscrapers were built here.
And today, the city has the most famous skyscrapers in the world.
You've got the Chrysler Building, and then, of course, we've got the Empire State Building.
Everyone thinks of New York, they think of the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building.
They're all sitting on bedrock.
Sheen : But Manhattan's bedrock isn't totally flat.
ln some places, it curves downward, and the depressions have been filled in with softer, younger rock.
Under Greenwich Village, a dip in the bedrock below is mirrored above ground by a dip in the skyline.
ln Midtown, where the bedrock is nearer the surface, the skyscrapers reappear.
A 21 st-century American city built upon foundations created 300 million years ago.
When the Appalachians were thrown up, they were the greatest mountains on Earth.
1 00 million years later, the supercontinent, Pangaea, split apart.
North America, in more or less the same shape we know it today, was born.
ln our journey across America, we've found tremendous riches that have come from beneath our feet -- volcanic outpourings of lava in our most western state Gold that helped create California's wealth Coal and oil from living plants and animals that once thrived in ancient seas and swamps lron from which we have built our cars, bridges, and railroads Timber to build our houses And the rock foundations of our mighty skyscrapers.
Over billions of years, the land that was to become the U.
S.
A.
was endowed with greater geological riches than any other nation on Earth.
lt's taken centuries of invention, industry, and skill for us to dig, blast, and tease those resources -- what lies beneath America -- out of the ground.
Nature's raw power and the courage of the American people have been the unstoppable forces that made us the rich and powerful nation we are today.