12, 588 feet above sea level, high in the barren peaks of Stony Pass, Colorado.

Snow melts into droplets of water. of Stoney Pass, Colorado.

Snow melts into droplets of water

that become tricklets, that become streams,

which become tributaries.

The 335,000 square mile watershed of the Rio Grande, the river that defines much of the

1900 mile border between the U.S. and Mexico.

It flows past Texas on the north side and on the south six different states in Mexico on its final leg to the Gulf.

Presently, the Rio Grande provides means of life to around 6 million people, flowing through

arid lands, rocky lands, a national park even, and dense population centers.

But it has been life blood to this part of the world forever.

And more than a century ago, it became the trigger point for a decisive war between neighbors

many today do not understand, if they even remember it happened. Hello all I'm Don Wildman and this is American History

hit. We're glad to have you.

Just north of the famous flat iron building in Manhattan at Broadway and 5th

Avenue, an intersection teeming with taxis, buses, and bike messengers is a stolid obelisk carved of granite.

Measuring more than 50 feet tall, this towering monument stands isolated on its own traffic island, protected by a perimeter of black cast iron fencing and inscribed up and down each side with names of famous battle sites.

On the front is a detailed bronze relief of a man on horseback

wearing a plumed helmet. This is a memorial to a soldier hero of the 19th

century, a man today known to few New Yorkers, but who once was so significant to a city and nation

as to have his remains paraded through the streets by more than 6,000 soldiers,

and then interred within a monument dedicated to his legacy.

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