🤠This Week in the West

📢 Episode Summary:

Beyond his announcing, Clancy was instrumental in promoting rodeos nationwide, often arriving in towns weeks ahead of events to build excitement. He also became rodeo's first historian, documenting the sport's origins and publishing influential works like My Fifty Years in Rodeo. Over his career, Clancy befriended Western legends like Will Rogers and Gene Autry, preserving the stories and spirit of early rodeo life.

Despite financial hardships, including a failed Wild West show venture during the Great Depression, Clancy remained dedicated to the rodeo world. His later years were spent writing and traveling with his wife, Alice, and their five children. In 1991, long after his passing in 1957, Clancy was honored with induction into the National Rodeo Hall of Fame, ensuring his legacy endures.

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🤠This Week in the West

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This episode recounts how Cather’s early aspirations of becoming a doctor gave way to her irresistible urge to write. From her teenage essays in the local newspaper to her rise as one of America's foremost regional authors, Cather’s literary voice resonated with authenticity and emotional depth. Though her star dimmed in the mid-century literary shift toward modernism, her works have since been rediscovered and celebrated anew for their enduring insight into human experience on the frontier.

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🤠This Week in the West

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We follow The Virginian as it gallops from page to stage and screen, with film adaptations spanning from 1914 to the Technicolor 1946 version starring Joel McCrea. The episode highlights how McCrea’s calm, grounded performance captured the quiet strength of Wister’s cowboy hero, bringing depth to the story’s exploration of morality, violence, and loyalty on the Western frontier. Reviews of the day praised McCrea for his authenticity and restraint—qualities that made his portrayal stand out in the crowded field of Western heroes.

The episode also celebrates Joel McCrea’s legacy beyond the screen, detailing his commitment to preserving Western heritage through his service to the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, where he was honored in 1969. Wister and McCrea’s shared contributions to Western culture live on through their stories.

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🤠This Week in the West

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At just eight years old, Eaton witnessed the murder of his father by a gang of former Confederate vigilantes known as the Regulators. Vowing revenge, he trained for years to become one of the sharpest shooters in Indian Territory, earning the nickname “Pistol Pete” from a U.S. Army colonel after outshooting the fort’s best marksmen at age fifteen.

Eaton's pursuit of justice led him across the West, where he hunted down his father’s killers one by one, even engaging in a legendary shootout in Albuquerque with the help of famed lawman Pat Garrett. Once his mission was fulfilled, Eaton chose a new path as a U.S. Deputy Marshal and later a blacksmith and storyteller in Perkins, Oklahoma.

From feared gunman to beloved folk hero, Eaton's legacy continued to grow, eventually inspiring Oklahoma A&M’s transformation into the Cowboys and cementing his place in Western lore. Through books, parades, and the stories passed down, Pistol Pete lives on—not just as a mascot but as a symbol of grit, honor, and frontier justice.

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🤠This Week in the West

📢 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. Though he spent his early years riding the Montana range, his passion for art led him to enroll in the Chicago Art Institute—by way of a cattle train, no less—in one of the most "cowboy-artist" career turns in American history.

Ralston's life took many twists, including a near-deployment in World War I that was canceled mid-Atlantic after peace was declared. After returning to the U.S., he resumed his art education and began a commercial art career out West. But Montana’s pull was strong. He and his wife returned home in 1930 to take over the family ranch, but the Great Depression made ranching unviable. Ralston moved to Billings, Montana, and threw himself into full-time painting, eventually gaining recognition for his work on post office murals and historical Western scenes.

A stickler for accuracy and authenticity, Ralston traveled extensively to research the settings and stories he portrayed. His work helped shape how Americans envision the West, particularly through his murals and historical paintings like Custer’s Last Hope. In a powerful photograph taken in 1981 by Jay Dusard, Ralston stands in front of his log cabin studio—saddle and spurs at his feet—embodying the very fusion of cowboy and artist that defines his legacy.

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🤠This Week in the West

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🤠This Week in the West

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Born on March 17, 1902, Alice grew up breaking horses on her family’s ranch before taking a job as a teenage mail carrier, covering 37 miles a day on horseback. When a group of cowboys dared her to ride a bucking bronco at a local rodeo, she took the challenge—and discovered her calling. 

Alice’s rodeo career spanned decades, earning her four world championships and a leading role in shaping the sport. She helped establish the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association.

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🤠This Week in the West

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Sandoz’s work went beyond biography—she fearlessly tackled political corruption, social injustice, and the realities of life on the Great Plains. Her novel Slogum House was banned for its unvarnished depiction of greed and cruelty, and Capital City stirred controversy for exposing government corruption. She later became known for her groundbreaking biography Crazy Horse: The Strange Man of the Oglalas, written from within the Lakota perspective, a pioneering approach for its time.

Mari Sandoz remained devoted to her craft despite setbacks, rejection, and even threats. Her deep commitment to truth and historical accuracy led to a body of work that continues to shape our understanding of the West. Inducted posthumously into the Hall of Great Westerners in 1998, her legacy lives on as an uncompromising voice of the frontier.

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🤠This Week in the West

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🤠This Week in the West

📢 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 journey to Texas from Italy and how being in the right place at the right time allowed Lucchese Bootmaker to become a bootmaker for the army before moving on to some of the most well-known customers in the world.

And then there was the time their shop door opened and in walked Teddy Roosevelt...

You can see some great examples of Lucchese boots at "Cowboy Boots: From Roundups to Runways," a new exhibition at the National Cowboy & National Heritage Museum. 

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