This Week in the West

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 he would discover in the earth beneath him would create a legacy for the cowboy and rewrite the history of the continent.

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, when he had his legendary ride of Tornado, but if he had, he would have remembered quite a few twists and turns. 

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 enter the picture. Performing took Woodard on the road more and more. Eventually, he moved to New York City and landed a part on Broadway, where his distinct baritone voice and Western accent earned him a nickname that stuck.

Woodard “Tex” Ritter became one of America’s most beloved cowboys and country singers and went on to start a show business dynasty. He died this week, January 2, 1974.

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 was in 1804. The men were Lewis and Clark. The girl was Sacagawea, who is thought to have died on this week, December 20, 1812.

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.

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. The Broncho at the University of Central Oklahoma? The Bison at Oklahoma Baptist University? The Ranger at Northwestern Oklahoma University. Frank “Pistol Pete” Eaton at Oklahoma State University. All of the above.

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.

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He was called "The Elvis of Rodeo."

He was Larry Mahan. 

We’ve got to admit something right off the bat here, folks. When we first looked at the biography of Larry Mahan, we thought, “Can we fit all of that into a podcast that we, believe it or not, try to keep to only seven to eight minutes ?”

But we’re sure Larry, one of the grittiest and greatest rodeo cowboys in history, wouldn’t want us just to give up.

So we’ll “cowboy up” and forge ahead to tell just some of the larger-than-life story of Larry Mahan, born this week, November 21, 1943.