Days of Jesse James

(at around 47 mins) A trainman comes into the passenger car selling newspapers. He announces a headline about building a canal across the Isthmus of Panama. Jesse James died in April 1882, many years before a proposal to build the Panama Canal.

To the contrary, in the early- to mid-1800s, several nations were interested in building a canal in Central America that would cut shipping times between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The U.S. and Great Britain negotiated the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty to build a canal in Nicaragua, and in 1880 France began excavation in Panama. So, while the canal was not built until the 1900s, there was talk in the U.S. about building the canal during Jesse James' lifetime.