Episode Guide | the West: a Film by Steven Ives | Ken Burns

Episode Five (1868 to 1874): The Grandest Enterprise Under God

A triumph of the human spirit, the transcontinental railroad opens a new era in the West, carrying homesteaders onto the prairies, bringing cowboys up the cattle trail from Texas, helping give women the vote in Utah and sending buffalo hunters onto the plains, where they drive a symbol of the West -- and a way of life -- to the brink of extinction.