This Week in the West

🤠This Week in the West 🎙️ Episode 28: BOB WILLS 📢 Episode Summary: On this week’s episode of This Week in The West, we celebrate the life and legacy of Bob Wills, the King of Western Swing. Broadcasting from the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, the show takes listeners deep into the roots of a musical style that shook up the 1930s and beyond. Wills and his Texas Pl...

🤠This Week in the West 🎙️ Episode 27: Myrtis Dightman 📢 Episode Summary: In this week’s episode of This Week in The West, we celebrate the 90th birthday of rodeo legend Myrtis Dightman, a man who broke barriers as the first Black cowboy to compete at the highest levels of bull riding. Known as the “Jackie Robinson of bull riding,” Dightman’s courage and talent paved the way for future generation...

🤠This Week in the West 🎙️ Episode 26: Foghorn Clancy 📢 Episode Summary: In this episode of This Week in The West, we share the remarkable story of Frederick Melton "Foghorn" Clancy, a cowboy whose booming voice made him one of rodeo's most iconic announcers. Born in 1882 in Alabama and raised in Texas, Clancy began working ranch jobs young and initially dreamed of being a rodeo champion. After a...

🤠This Week in the West 🎙️ Episode 25: Willa Cather 📢 Episode Summary: In this episode of This Week in The West, we journey to the sweeping prairies of Nebraska to explore the life and legacy of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Willa Cather. Born in Virginia in 1873 and later raised in Red Cloud, Nebraska, Cather was profoundly shaped by the open landscapes and resilient immigrant communities of the...

🤠This Week in the West 🎙️ Episode 24: The Virginian, Owen Wister & Joel McCrea 📢 Episode Summary: On this week’s episode of This Week in the West, we tell the story of The Virginian, the groundbreaking Western novel that became a cultural touchstone, a movie classic, and a symbol of frontier justice. Seth Spillman takes us back to the turn of the 20th century, when Owen Wister—plagued by ill...

🤠This Week in the West 🎙️ Episode 23: Frank “Pistol Pete” Eaton 📢 Episode Summary: This week on This Week in the West, we saddle up with the unforgettable tale of Frank “Pistol Pete” Eaton, the real-life cowboy behind one of college sports’ most iconic mascots. Known today for his likeness on the sidelines of Oklahoma State games, Eaton’s life was anything but a cartoon. Born into tragedy and ra...

🤠This Week in the West 🎙️ Episode 22: J.K. Ralston 📢 Episode Summary: On this week's episode of This Week in the West, we spotlight the life and legacy of J.K. Ralston, a celebrated Western artist born March 31, 1896, in Montana. Raised on the frontier by a family that chased gold across the West before settling near Choteau, Ralston lived the cowboy life before ever picking up a paintbrush. Tho...

🤠This Week in the West 🎙️ Episode 21: SANDRA DAY O’CONNOR 📢 Episode Summary: This week on This Week in The West, we honor the life and legacy of Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman to serve on the United States Supreme Court. Raised on a cattle ranch in Arizona, O’Connor’s Western upbringing instilled in her the resilience and determination that would define her groundbreaking legal career. Fro...

🤠This Week in the West 🎙️ Episode 20: Alice Greenough Orr 📢 Episode Summary: On this week’s episode of This Week in the West, we meet Alice Greenough Orr, a Montana ranch girl who became the First Lady of Rodeo. While performing in Spain, Alice found herself in a bullfighting arena where the matador had failed to finish the job. The restless crowd grew impatient—until Alice stepped forward, jump...

🤠This Week in the West 🎙️ Episode 19: Mari Sandoz 📢 Episode Summary: This week’s episode of This Week in the West tells the story of Mari Sandoz, who was no stranger to hardship. Growing up on the harsh Nebraska prairie, she endured physical and emotional struggles that shaped her perspective and writing. Despite her father’s lifelong discouragement, a dying request from him set her on a path to...

🤠This Week in the West 🎙️ Episode 18: Charles Goodnight 📢 Episode Summary: This episode of “This Week in the West” explores the life and legacy of Charles Goodnight, a legendary cattleman and trailblazer born on March 5, 1836. From his early years in Texas to his role in the Texas Rangers and the Goodnight-Loving Trail, Goodnight made a lasting impact on the American West. He was instrumental in...

🤠This Week in the West 🎙️ Episode 17: Salvatore “Sam” Lucchese 📢 Episode Summary: When Salvatore Lucchese and his family arrived in America in 1883, they had the knowledge of shoemaking, and not much else.  More than a century later, “Sam” has a legacy - Lucchese Bootmaker, one of the most well-known and respected brands for cowboy boots.  In our podcast this week, we tell the story of Sam’s jou...

🤠This Week in the West 🎙️ Episode 16: Edward Curtis 📢 Episode Summary: This episode of This Week in the West explores the life and legacy of Edward Curtis, a photographer whose work documented Native American cultures in the early 20th century. Curtis’ career took a defining turn when he photographed Princess Angeline, the daughter of Chief Seattle. This led to his lifelong mission of capturing...

🤠This Week in the West 🎙️ Episode 15: Pawnee Bill 📢 Episode Summary: This episode of This Week in The West explores the life of Gordon William Lillie, better known as Pawnee Bill, a showman and entrepreneur who helped shape the mythology of the American West. Born in 1860, Lillie worked with the Pawnee tribe before joining Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show as an interpreter. He later created hi...

🤠This Week in the West 🎙️ Episode 14: Edward Fitzgerald Beale 📢 Episode Summary: On this week’s episode of This Week in the West, we learn about Edward Fitzgerald Beale, a 19th-century adventurer, war hero and trailblazer whose exploits helped shape the American West.  From serving as a spy for President James K. Polk during the Oregon boundary dispute to rallying reinforcements in the Mexican-A...

It’s lost to history when this dentist precisely decided his practice was too dull and that writing should be his life's pursuit. He may have been pulling a tooth or drilling a cavity, but as the 19th Century ended, Dr. Zane Grey knew he was bored and depressed with his current life. In the years that followed, despite publishers’ rejections and struggles with his mental health, Zane Grey became o...

George McJunkin stood at the summit of the Capulin Volcano in northern New Mexico and looked over the valley below. He had long since left his boyhood in slavery; he had made his own way. He was a Cowboy. To his west were the Sangre de Christo Mountains and spreading out in the valley below the volcano was the land that had become his home: The Dry Cimarron. He called it his “Promised Land.” What...

Freckles Brown had done a lot of living in his 46 years when he stepped into the arena in Oklahoma City in December of 1967. He was just a month shy of his birthday, which we remember this week. Brown was born January 18, 1921, so by the late 1960s he was a couple of decades older than some of his bullriding competitors.  We don’t know if Brown’s life flashed before his eyes that night in ‘67, whe...

In the summer of 1884, Theodore Roosevelt left New York and settled into a low-slung, log ranch house near the Little Missouri River, 35 miles north of Medora, North Dakota. Living on the ranch would transform Roosevelt, who had been known as an elite, Gilded Age intellectual, into a proponent of The Strenuous Life. He would challenge himself physically, embrace nature and do hard things.

Woodward Ritter had gone to the University of Texas to study the law. Yet here was, in his fourth year of college and his grades were a disaster. Ten law classes. Five F’s, three D’s and two C’s.  All his time, including when he should have been studying, had been taken up by his time singing, crisscrossing the country as a performer and the president of the UT glee club. But the law would never e...

On this week's episode of our podcast This Week in The West: He was born in New York and died in Connecticut, but perhaps no one defined America’s imagination about the West more than Frederic Remington.   Every day here at The Cowboy, we stroll past Remington’s remarkable works of art.   Along with Charles Russell and a handful of others, Remington helped create the archetypes of the West. It is...

We start with two men who were among the country’s most skilled explorers, personally hand-picked by Thomas Jefferson, to add an expansive new chapter to the story of the United States. With them was a pregnant 16-year-old (but she could have been younger), accompanying a man who had purchased her to become his “wife” a few years earlier. Ahead of them lay 5,000 miles of the unknown country. That...

Chester Reynolds was the visionary mind behind the creation of The National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum almost 70 years ago, but tragically never stepped foot in the building. Find out more about his story in the latest episode of our podcast "This Week in The West." Each week we tell the stories of the people who shaped the American West - and are still shaping it today! Find us on your...

Today, we celebrate one of Oklahoma’s greatest artists, Harold Holden, who died this week a year ago, on December 6, 2023.   He was called just “H” by his friends. A self-taught sculptor, he became the icon who created icons all across our fine state.   A Will Rogers sculpture at Will Rogers International Airport? It’s a Harold Holden. A Cowboy in Oklahoma City’s Stockyards City? Yes, that, too. T...

He’d been in Hollywood since the silent pictures. He’d taken punches, fallen off horses, rolled down hills and gotten up each time. And in the summer of 1958, he was in Rome, standing behind a Roman chariot, preparing to shoot one of the greatest action sequences in movie history. Yakima Canutt had come a long way from Colfax, Washington, where he was born this week November 29, 1895. Follow us an...