Historian Heather Cox Richardson is producing a series of 250 one-minute videos to mark the country’s 250thanniversary. Each is about a person, place or event that is part of our collective story. It’s a reminder that all kinds of people make history.
I’m interested in the series as whole because I’m a fan of Eduardo Galeano’s Memory of Fire trilogy, which seeks to tell the story of the Americas in a series of vignettes.
I love stories told in this way. The first and hardest trick, it seems to me, is to decide which short stories to tell.
If I were telling the story, I’d include the Lead Plate Expedition led by Capt. Pierre-Joseph Céleron de Blainville in 1749. The French and English were quarreling over much of the continent, and the expedition went down the Ohio River, putting lead plates at the major tributaries, claiming the watershed for Louis XV.
I like the story because it’s barmy, baffling and tragic at the same time. We — meaning the people who belong to this place — have understood so little what a watershed means that it’s hard to grasp. We’ve made great claims about ownership and rights while understanding little about the land and its natural history. We’ve done great damage and are still at it, pausing only occasionally to look around and think.
I think that’s part of our story.
• Sources: The introduction to the “250 to 250” project is here:
https://youtu.be/xrzQjU560Gs?is=_JGPDtwvNDp_nxWv
Some episodes are better than others. I belatedly tuned in to the series when I read Michael Leddy’s criticism of the episode on Willa Cather. His post “Willa Cather in 250 to 250” is here:
https://mleddy.blogspot.com/2026/06/willa-cather-in-250-to-250.html
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