This Week in the West

🤠This Week in the West 🎙️ Episode 78: The Wild Western Life of Artist Olaf Wieghorst 📢 Episode Summary: This episode of This Week in the West explores the remarkable life of Western artist Olaf Wieghorst, a man whose story reads like the very scenes he would later paint. Born in Denmark in 1899, Wieghorst developed an early fascination with horses while performing as a child acrobat and circus r...

🤠This Week in the West 🎙️Episode 77: Naturalist John Muir's Vision of Preserving the West 📢 Episode Summary: This episode tells the remarkable story of John Muir, whose life changed forever after a factory accident in 1867 temporarily blinded him. When his vision returned, Muir saw it as a second chance and chose to leave behind industrial life to pursue a deeper connection with the natural worl...

🤠This Week in the West 🎙️ Episode 76: Glenna Goodacre, Reagan’s Sculptor and More  📢 Episode Summary: Glenna Goodacre’s life and work reveal the power of sculpture to tell deeply human stories rooted in history, emotion and place. Best known for her bronze statue After the Ride of President Ronald Reagan at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, Goodacre had a gift for capturing pers...

🤠This Week in the West 🎙️ Episode 75: How James Garner re-defined the Western hero  📢 Episode Summary: James Garner’s story begins in Norman, Oklahoma, with a difficult childhood marked by loss, hardship and an uncertain future. After leaving school early, he worked a series of jobs before serving in both World War II and the Korean War, where he was wounded twice and earned two Purple Hearts. A...

🤠This Week in the West 🎙️ Episode 74: Jo Decker and the Importance of Rodeo Secretaries 📢 Episode Summary: Jo Ramsey Decker stood at the center of rodeo’s evolution, bridging the gap between competitor and organizer at a time when the sport was still finding its footing. From her early days growing up on a Texas ranch to competing in rodeos as a child, Decker developed a deep connection to Weste...

🤠This Week in the West 🎙️ Episode 73: John Arbuckle and Coffee's Importance in the West 📢 Episode Summary: This episode of This Week in The West explores the surprising but essential role coffee played in shaping life on the American frontier, focusing on the legacy of John Arbuckle. At a time when coffee was difficult to preserve and inconsistent in quality, Arbuckle revolutionized the industry...

🤠This Week in the West 🎙️ Episode 72: Charles Russell: Artist & Original Great Westerner 📢 Episode Summary: This week on This Week in The West, we remember Charles Marion Russell, one of the most important artists to ever capture the spirit of the American frontier. Born March 19, 1864, Russell left his comfortable home in St. Louis at just sixteen years old to pursue his dream of becoming a...

🤠This Week in the West 🎙️ Episode 71: The Miller Brothers and the Rise of the 101 Ranch 📢 Episode Summary: This week on This Week in The West, we remember Joe Miller Sr., one of the driving forces behind Oklahoma’s legendary 101 Ranch. Born March 12, 1868, Miller grew up in a cattle family that helped shape ranching in Indian Territory. After their father, Colonel George Washington Miller, estab...

🤠This Week in the West 🎙️ Episode 70: How Jesse Chisholm Talked His Way Into Western History 📢 Episode Summary: This week on This Week in The West, we remember Jesse Chisholm, the man whose name became permanently attached to one of the most famous cattle trails in American history. Yet Chisholm himself was not a cowboy or cattle baron. Born around 1805 to a Scottish father and a Cherokee mother...

🤠This Week in the West 🎙️ Episode 69: Quanah Parker, Remarkable Native Leader 📢 Episode Summary: This week on This Week in The West, we remember Quanah Parker, the famed Comanche leader, on the anniversary of his death on February 23, 1911. Born the son of Comanche war chief Peta Nocona and Cynthia Ann Parker—a white woman captured and raised among the Comanche—Quanah grew up fully immersed in C...

🤠This Week in the West 🎙️ Episode 68: Albert Bierstadt's Larger-Than-Life Artistic Journey 📢 Episode Summary: This episode of This Week in The West explores the life and legacy of artist Albert Bierstadt through one of the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum’s most breathtaking works, Emigrants Crossing the Plains. Known for his massive, dramatic landscapes, Bierstadt didn’t simply doc...

🤠This Week in the West 🎙️ Episode 67: Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House Author’s Version of Pioneer Life 📢 Episode Summary: This episode of This Week in The West explores the life and legacy of Laura Ingalls Wilder, whose Little House books shaped how generations of Americans imagine frontier life. Born in 1867, Wilder grew up in a constantly moving pioneer family that faced illegal settlement...

🤠This Week in the West 🎙️ Episode 66: Belle Starr, Queen of the Outlaws 📢 Episode Summary: Belle Starr’s life sits at the uneasy intersection of fact and legend, shaped as much by mythmaking as by crime. Born in Missouri in 1848 and educated in refinement, the Civil War upended her world and drew her into outlaw circles that included Confederate guerrillas and future members of the James-Younger...

🤠This Week in the West 🎙️ Episode 65: Casey Tibbs, Rodeo’s Golden Boy 📢 Episode Summary: This episode of This Week in The West explores the extraordinary life and legacy of Casey Tibbs, one of the most influential figures in rodeo history. Born into a hard-scrabble homesteading family in South Dakota, Tibbs ignored his father’s doubts about rodeo and launched a career that would redefine the spo...

🤠This Week in the West 🎙️ Episode 64: The Hollywood Drama of Broncho Billy Anderson  📢 Episode Summary: In this episode of This Week in The West, we remember Broncho Billy Anderson, one of the very first cowboy movie stars and a true pioneer of American cinema. Born Maxwell Henry Aronson in 1880 to Jewish immigrant parents, Anderson found his way from stage performances and odd acting jobs into...

🤠This Week in the West 🎙️ Episode 63: Bass Reeves, the Legendary Lawman 📢 Episode Summary: This episode of This Week in The West honors the life and legacy of Bass Reeves, one of the most remarkable lawmen of the American frontier, remembered on the anniversary of his death. Born into slavery in Arkansas in 1838, Reeves escaped bondage during the Civil War and found refuge in Indian Territory, w...

🤠This Week in the West 🎙️ Episode 62: Tom Mix, the Highs and Lows of Hollywood’s First Cowboy Superstar 📢 Episode Summary: This episode of This Week in The West tips its hat to Tom Mix, one of the first true cowboy superstars, remembered on the week of his birth, January 6, 1880. From his towering white Stetson—one example of which lives in the Museum’s collection—to his fearless stunt work and...

🤠This Week in the West 🎙️ Episode 61: Wanda Harper Bush 📢 Episode Summary: This episode of This Week in The West remembers the extraordinary life and legacy of Wanda Harper Bush, one of the most accomplished cowgirls in rodeo history, on the tenth anniversary of her death. The story opens with a rare moment of national attention: Bush’s appearance on the television game show To Tell the Truth, w...

🤠This Week in the West 🎙️ Episode 60: George Catlin, the Artist Driven to Capture Native Culture 📢 Episode Summary: This episode of This Week in The West reflects on the life and legacy of George Catlin, who died on December 23, 1872. Driven by an obsessive sense of urgency, Catlin dedicated his life to documenting Native American tribes at a moment when disease, westward expansion, and U.S. gov...

🤠This Week in the West 🎙️ Episode 59: Jackson Sundown, an Icon of the West  📢 Episode Summary: The iconic cowboy silhouette in the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum’s logo is more than a symbol—it’s a real person with an extraordinary story. That figure is based on Jackson Sundown, a legendary early-20th-century rodeo competitor and a full-blooded member of the Wallowa Band of the Ne...

🤠This Week in the West 🎙️ Episode 58: Jesse Harper, the Kansas Rancher Who Built Notre Dame Football 📢 Episode Summary: This episode of This Week in The West explores the remarkable, often overlooked life of Jesse Harper—a rancher, coach, and member of the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum’s Hall of Great Westerners. The story opens in 1931 with the tragic Kansas plane crash that kil...

🤠This Week in the West 🎙️ Episode 57: Bill Pickett, King of The Bulldoggers 📢 Episode Summary: This week’s episode of This Week in The West celebrates the remarkable life of Bill Pickett, born December 5, 1870—one of the most iconic and innovative cowboys in American history. Known for an almost unbelievable act—bringing down steers with his teeth—Pickett captured national attention in the early...

🤠This Week in the West 🎙️ Episode 56: Joseph Glidden and the History of Barbed Wire  📢 Episode Summary: This episode explores the surprising origins and sweeping impact of one of the most transformative inventions in Western history: barbed wire. The story begins in 1873 on a farm near DeKalb, Illinois, where Joseph Glidden searched for a way to keep cows out of his wife Lucinda’s yard. A few wi...

🤠This Week in the West 🎙️ Episode 55: Clark Hulings and the Origin of the Prix de West  📢 Episode Summary: This week’s episode of This Week in The West explores the origins of the Museum’s signature art exhibition, the Prix de West, through the life and legacy of one of its most influential early artists: Clark Hulings. Listeners are reminded that the Prix de West—now more than five decades stro...

🤠This Week in the West 🎙️ Episode 54: 70 Years Celebrating the West at The Cowboy 📢 Episode Summary: This episode of This Week in The West celebrates the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum’s own story—marking the 70th anniversary of its founding and the 60th anniversary of its building. The episode takes listeners back to November 11, 1955, when 3,000 people gathered northeast of Okla...