🤠This Week in the West

📢 Episode Summary:

His partnership with Buffalo Bill led to a hugely successful touring show, and he later settled in Pawnee, Oklahoma, where he built a ranch, experimented with Western films, and preserved his legacy. Despite personal tragedies, his impact on Western history remains, with his ranch now a museum honoring his contributions.

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🤠This Week in the West

📢 Episode Summary:

From serving as a spy for President James K. Polk during the Oregon boundary dispute to rallying reinforcements in the Mexican-American War alongside Kit Carson, Beale built a reputation for bravery and resourcefulness. He later played a key role in confirming the California Gold Rush to the U.S. government, further cementing his place in history as an agent of westward expansion.

One of Beale’s most notable contributions was his 1857 expedition to survey a route from Fort Defiance, Arizona, to the Colorado River, during which he experimented with using camels as pack animals in the harsh desert environment. Though the U.S. Army ultimately abandoned the camel experiment, the route he mapped—known as Beale’s Wagon Road—became a vital artery for westward migration, influencing the path of the Santa Fe Railroad, Route 66, and today’s Interstate 40. His contributions placed him among the key explorers who left a lasting impact on the American frontier.

🔍 What You’ll Learn:

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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 one of the most popular Western novelists in history. He was born this week, January 31, 1872.

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.