204: Two Thousand Miles to Freedom. California National Historic Trail.

National Park After Dark

Audioboom Studios

True Crime, Places & Travel, Wilderness, Society & Culture, Sports

4.8 • 4.6K Ratings

🗓️ 5 February 2024

⏱️ 62 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Bridget Biddy Mason was forced to walk from Mississippi to California when her enslaver followed Mormon leader, Brigham Young to the west. While others rode in wagons or on horseback, she walked the entire way, while caring for her new born baby. Her story is one of survival, courage, and strength that leads her to become one of the most successful and wealthiest black women of her time.

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Sources: NPS, LA Conservancy, NPS (2), NPS (3), NPS (4) Book: Biddy Mason: A Place of her Own by Camille Gavin

Transcript

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0:00.0	In the mid-19th century, settlers who came to the east of the United States had dreams of gold and vast fertile landscapes for farming.
0:11.5	With the hopes and promise of a new world, over 250,000 people
0:16.8	made the arduous journey over 2,000 miles through some of the harshest
0:21.8	landscapes the United States has to offer.
0:25.0	What has gone down in history as one of the largest migrations of people
0:29.0	has been romanticized as an adventure with pioneers and cowboys in the west.
0:34.6	But the conditions of these tracks were grueling.
0:37.2	They were unsanitary, filled with disease, death, and sometimes starvation.
0:42.6	This was also a time filled with battles and wars.
0:45.6	While pioneers made a way for a new world,
0:48.0	they massacred and destroyed the indigenous life that thrived there first. While this journey is mostly spoken of that
0:55.0	the wasn't the case for the first.
0:56.0	While this journey is mostly spoken of as a trek people made on their own accord,
0:58.0	that wasn't the case for everyone.
1:00.0	Many people were forced to walk thousands of miles across the country and Biddy Mason was one of those people.
1:10.0	Welcome to National Park After Dark. This is so fitting that you're doing this episode right now. I don't actually know what it's about
1:38.0	so maybe not but because I just finished 1883 the series.
1:43.4	Oh for the prequel of Yellowstone.
1:46.3	Yeah and I just started 1923 last night but and I know I'm so behind like the show is
1:51.1	years old I get that but I just finished it a couple days ago and it's all about
1:55.7	trekking across the United States and it was more of like the Oregon Trail center because I know you haven't seen it but yeah it was really really good that's what I've heard I've heard that did you you finished it I've finished it I've
2:12.0	I've seen the first episode of Yellowstone and that's all. So it's not required to not required. Not required. Yellowstone first. Yeah. Wait, so is this about the Oregon Trail or no? No, no. Okay, so all right, never mind.
	...

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