Me, a Chicagoan, definitely the Fort Dearborn Massacre.
Lonely Outpost. War of 1812. Rumors about Tecumseh’s doings. Tension, tension, tension. The Pottawatomie side of things, Winemac, Black Partridge. Tension, tension, tension. The final march. The bloody ending. Cool.
Howza about where you live?
The story of Pánfilo de Narváez is an epic tale from our area and predates the pilgrims.
I don’t think there’s a single filmable bit of local history that hasn’t been done to death already. But a couple of years ago I saw a History Channel made for TV movie about the Pilgrims. That would make a nice theatrical production if it had better actors.
Anybody know a good (or not so) movie about the NYS/Erie canals? It opened the mid-west.
I think there was some miniscule Civil War battle fought here in Cape Girardeau, MO, but (only somewhat off-topic) I would really like to see a movie based on Melville’s book The Confidence Man, whose setting is a steamship going down the Mississippi and passing by such local places as Cape Girardeau and Cairo, IL.
I would like to see a biopic made about Amor de Cosmos, who I like to think set the tone for life in this province under Confederation. Father of wild-eyed West Coast eccentrics.
Probably more people would enjoy seeing The Great Fire of 1886 get the Pearl Harbour-style historical drama treatment. (First hand accounts of this are pretty amazing. I recall one fella lay down in the middle of Hastings street, with his pack over his head for protection. The heat from the fire made the ammunition in his pack discharge - his account does not relate whether or not he actually soiled his pants, but I know I would have.)
I’m not from there, nor have I visited, but has the Halifax explosion ever gotten a film treatment?
I’d love to see Nathaniel Philbrick’s wonderful Mayflower put into movie form. It presents both the Pilgrims and the Indians as real people with real motivations, in sharp contrast to the school-play version of Thanksgiving we’re usually subjected to, but that’s not all. King Philip’s War, which followed in the next generation, gets no historical attention at all but still made a helluva story in Philbrick’s hands.
The Boston Molasses disaster of 1919. I know there have been some documentaries, but I want a Michael Bay treatment of it.
A pretty good CBC dramatization a few years back. Worth a look, and pretty decent production values for a made-for-CBC movie. (We’ve come a long way from the “Goin’ Down the Road” era.) 
Far more recently, I would love to see a movie about the Sterling Hall Bombing on the campus of UW-Madison in August 1970.
I would like to see a movie about the Lincoln County War (you know, the one with Billy the Kid) that made some attempt at historical accuracy.
Or a Civil War movie about the battles of Valverde and Glorietta.
Governor Manuel Armijo would make an interesting biopic.
I’d like to see a decently-done filmed version of the Gouzenko affair here in Ottawa. During the Second World War, Gouzenko was a Soviet cipher clerk, but just a short while after the war ended, he received notice that he and his family were going to be sent back to the Soviet Union. He packed a briefcase with classified documents and deciphering materials and walked out the door of the embassy. When he went to the RCMP, they didn’t believe him. The newspapers weren’t interested and sent him to the Department of Justice, where nobody was on duty. He and his family hid in the apartment next to their own all night while they listened to Soviet agents search through his apartment and all his belongings.
The next day he still had a difficult time finding officials who believed his story, but he was eventually transferred to a secret camp outside of Ottawa where he was interviewed extensively by British and American agents. Even when he threatened suicide, it was almost impossible for the government to take him seriously. He and his family were finally granted asylum and assigned new identities. (This was already made into a film, The Iron Curtain, but that was in 1948 and the story is ripe for a better adaptation.)
A historically-accurate miniseries on Lewis and Clark would cover the history of several states.
Here in Lethbridge, we have a very high, very long, railroad bridge. It was constructed a hundred years ago, and is still in use today by modern trains. The Wikipedia page calls it the “Lethbridge Viaduct,” but to most locals, it is simply, “the High Level Bridge.”
I know a little about the history of the bridge, but I’d really like to see the complete story of how this bridge came to be: the arguments that made building this one a good idea, the surveying, the engineering that was done, and the construction itself. It was so well-engineered and constructed and maintained over the years, that today, it carries trains well in excess of the lengths and weights that trains were when the bridge opened. But apparently, it’s been said that a bridge like this one would not be built today. What answers to all kinds of questions about this bridge could a movie give?
The Robison Murders have fascinated me for years. It’s such an eerie story!
Thanks!
I used to know a woman who was there. She and her little friend were on their way to school. She realized that she forgot something and ran back to her house to get it. That’s when the explosion happened. She never saw her friend again.
Funny thing was she soon moved to the States. Something like 70 years later, she ran into another childhood friend who survived that day. He had been living right around the corner from her – for something like 60 years!
Hey, that’s a movie right there.
don’t live there any more but I think a movie detailing the forced eviction of the Chinese populace of Tacoma and Seattle would be very interesting.
I was born and raised in North Florida, and all my life I’ve heard the story of Osceola and the treaty the American government wanted him to sign, giving up the Seminoles’ lands. The story goes that, rather than sign, he stabbed his knife through the paper and into the table, declaring that this was “the only signature the white man will ever get from me!” Undoubtedly more myth than reality, but in truth he was a fascinating figure from a tribe that never actually surrendered to the US. I’d love to see a movie done about him, and it wouldn’t bother me a bit if the film was as much legend as strict biography.
The Whitman Massacre and the Cayuse Warthat followed. Basically, a story of how good but naive and misguided intentions can lead to tragedy for all concerned.