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Wild West Podcast
Michael King/Brad Smalley
276 episodes
1 day ago
Send us a text Forget the postcard version of Dodge City. We open the door to the Great Western Hotel and step into a town intent on trading dust for dignity, noise for order, and short-term profits for a longer arc of respectability. The surprise is in the name itself: Great Western wasn’t a nod to cattle drives; it was a bid to borrow the prestige of Brunel’s railway and steamship, the Victorian shorthand for speed, reliability, and modern life. That branding choice tells us more about ambi...
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All content for Wild West Podcast is the property of Michael King/Brad Smalley and is served directly from their servers with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.
Send us a text Forget the postcard version of Dodge City. We open the door to the Great Western Hotel and step into a town intent on trading dust for dignity, noise for order, and short-term profits for a longer arc of respectability. The surprise is in the name itself: Great Western wasn’t a nod to cattle drives; it was a bid to borrow the prestige of Brunel’s railway and steamship, the Victorian shorthand for speed, reliability, and modern life. That branding choice tells us more about ambi...
Show more...
Education
Personal Journals,
Society & Culture,
History
Episodes (20/276)
Wild West Podcast
The Great Western Wasn’t Named For The Cattle Trail
Send us a text Forget the postcard version of Dodge City. We open the door to the Great Western Hotel and step into a town intent on trading dust for dignity, noise for order, and short-term profits for a longer arc of respectability. The surprise is in the name itself: Great Western wasn’t a nod to cattle drives; it was a bid to borrow the prestige of Brunel’s railway and steamship, the Victorian shorthand for speed, reliability, and modern life. That branding choice tells us more about ambi...
Show more...
1 day ago
29 minutes

Wild West Podcast
How One Train Chose Ford, Kansas Over Ryansville
Send us a text A single whistle split the prairie air—and with it, the future of two rival towns. We revisit November 25, 1887, when the Arkansas, Kansas, and Colorado Railroad rolled into Ford, Kansas and turned isolation into opportunity, commerce into momentum, and a bitter rivalry into a clear verdict. What looks like a short stretch of track becomes a story about how infrastructure decides who thrives, who moves, and who fades from the map. We set the stage with Dodge City’s fifteen-yea...
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1 day ago
2 minutes

Wild West Podcast
Trail Of Fact And Fable
Send us a text A quiet click in a digital archive set off a bigger question: how did a tidy tale about the “Western Trail” in 1873 outrun the dusty, documented truth of 1874? We follow the breadcrumb trail from a glossy magazine headline to the rail-choked streets of Dodge City, where buffalo hides, not longhorns, drove the economy. From there, we trace John T. Lytle’s government contract to feed the Sioux, the mapped river crossings, and the August 1, 1874 deadline that defined the fir...
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1 week ago
24 minutes

Wild West Podcast
Setting The Record Straight On The Western Trail
Send us a text A trail’s name shouldn’t be a marketing plan, yet that’s exactly how the West’s most traveled cattle route got mislabeled. We follow the evidence from a fresh historiographical review back to 1874, when John T. Lytle cut a new path north after the Chisholm route jammed, and forward to the moment Dodge City exploded into the greatest cattle market on earth. Along the way, we sit with the drovers’ own words—the functional names they used at the time—and weigh them against monumen...
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1 week ago
22 minutes

Wild West Podcast
Experience The Night John Brown Sparked America’s Reckoning
Send us a text A cold wind skims the Potomac, the town sleeps, and nineteen men step toward a federal armory believing they can change the course of a nation. We pull you inside the hour-by-hour chaos of Harper’s Ferry—bridges taken in the dark, telegraph alarms racing east, hostages herded into a small engine house, and a plan that tightens into a steel trap. No tidy hindsight, just the immediacy of crackling dispatches and the raw choices that turned a local raid into a national reckoning. ...
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2 weeks ago
32 minutes

Wild West Podcast
Halloween in Dodge City 1877
Send us a text Halloween in Dodge City is posted once a year during the month of October. The podcast tells the story of some of the characters who lived in Dodge City, Kansas, during the early frontier days. The story takes place on October 31, when a fictitious character named Luke McGlue visits a resting site known as Boot Hill. While waiting to administer the Kelly Cure, Luke visits and tells the stories of individual characters buried at Boot Hill. These long-lost souls include Lizzy Pal...
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4 weeks ago
31 minutes

Wild West Podcast
Phantom On The Prairie Ditch
Send us a text The prairie doesn’t forget—and it won’t let us forget either. We follow a chilling thread from a 96-mile irrigation scheme called the Eureka Canal to a vanished laborer whose story was buried in snow, silence, and someone else’s balance sheet. What begins as a Halloween ghost story widens into a study of hubris, place, and the quiet power of naming the lost. We unpack Asa T. Soule’s rise from hop bitters fortune to Western empire building, and how the canal promised a new Eden...
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1 month ago
35 minutes

Wild West Podcast
The Forgotten Grave Of Ed Masterson
Send us a text The wind on the Kansas plains doesn’t just rattle old storefronts; it carries the names we’ve let disappear. We retrace the final patrol of City Marshal Ed Masterson, shot along Dodge City’s infamous deadline in 1878, and follow the paper-thin trail of his remains from Fort Dodge to the overgrown ruins of Prairie Grove to the tidy rows of Maple Grove. What starts as a gripping frontier shootout turns into a forensic hunt for a missing grave, a meditation on how towns expand, an...
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1 month ago
28 minutes

Wild West Podcast
Night Ride to Fort Sumner
Send us a text A contract to feed a frontier post shouldn’t have ended at a river cave, but the Pecos has a way of bending plans. We head out with Oliver Loving and W.J. Wilson on a night-run mission to Fort Sumner that turns into a standoff against a swelling war party, where ground, grit, and a few feet of brush decide the line between life and legend. When a parley sign flickers on the plains and a hidden shot rips through Loving’s wrist and side, the story snaps from strategy to survival,...
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1 month ago
11 minutes

Wild West Podcast
Secrets Beneath the Limestone: The Haunted Legacy of Dodge City’s Home of Stone
Send us a text A limestone mansion built to defy the prairie became a vessel for sorrow—and then a sanctuary. We take you inside Dodge City’s Home of Stone, from John Mueller’s audacious rise and the black walnut staircase that flaunted prosperity, to the winter they called the White Death that buried a cattle empire under ice. Amid ruin, another story took hold: Caroline’s quiet grief, a nursery that never warmed, a rocking chair that swayed without wind, and a whisper that sounded like a ch...
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1 month ago
34 minutes

Wild West Podcast
The Sand Creek Betrayal: America's Darkest Hour on the Frontier
Send us a text November 29, 1864 dawned cold on the Colorado plains as Cheyenne and Arapaho families slept peacefully under an American flag—a gift promising protection. By nightfall, over 200 Native Americans lay dead in what would become one of the most shameful episodes in American history. The Sand Creek Massacre didn't happen in isolation. It grew from a toxic brew of broken treaties, gold rush fever, and political ambition. Once respected Cheyenne and Arapaho territories, recognized in...
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2 months ago
26 minutes

Wild West Podcast
Beyond the Narrative: Jeff Broome Challenges What We Know About Sand Creek
Send us a text Gold rushes change landscapes—both physical and human. When 100,000 settlers poured into Colorado Territory following the 1858 discovery of gold, they unknowingly set in motion a chain of events that would culminate in one of America's most controversial military actions. The newcomers' wagons followed water sources critical to both buffalo herds and the nomadic Plains Indians who depended on them for survival. As these resources vanished, tensions escalated into violence. His...
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2 months ago
23 minutes

Wild West Podcast
Bassett of the Badlands: The Fearless First Marshal of Dodge City!
Send us a text Charlie Bassett may be the most important Wild West lawman you've never heard of. Before Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson became household names, they wore their first badges under his leadership in Dodge City, Kansas—a place so notoriously lawless it earned the nickname "the wickedest little town in America." Born in Massachusetts in 1847, Bassett's journey took him from Civil War battlefields to the heart of frontier chaos. Standing only five feet four inches tall, what he lacke...
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2 months ago
36 minutes

Wild West Podcast
The Mysterious Life of Dutch Henry Borne
Send us a text The tangled web of myth and reality surrounding Dutch Henry Borne reveals a captivating window into the American frontier experience. Our exploration of this enigmatic outlaw's life continues as we examine the controversial claims and counterclaims about one of the West's most fascinating characters. Dutch Henry's transformation from military scout to notorious criminal traverses the shifting moral landscape of the frontier. Beginning his Western career in 1867 as a scout for ...
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3 months ago
27 minutes

Wild West Podcast
Whiskey pours as the true story of the man who inspired Lonesome Dove unfolds
Send us a text Some monsters aren't fiction – they're buried in Dodge City Cemetery beneath stones that read "beloved husband and father." The story of Print Olive might be the most shocking true tale we've covered on Whiskey and Westerns. While sipping Bullet Bourbon (a fitting choice given Print's remarkable ability to absorb lead throughout his violent career), we unraveled the brutal history of a man whose sadistic tendencies would make even fictional villains seem tame. Print began as ...
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3 months ago
38 minutes

Wild West Podcast
How a Dog Survived a Drunken Gunslinger's Bullets
Send us a text Step back in time to the dusty, lawless streets of Dodge City, Kansas as we unravel the enigmatic legend of "Mysterious" Dave Mathers over glasses of Knob Creek bourbon. Few characters in Western lore earned their nicknames more honestly than Mathers, whose life story combines gunfights, peculiar behavior, and ultimately, a disappearance that sealed his place in frontier mythology. We trace Mathers' journey from his early days as a horse thief running with Dave Rudabaugh to hi...
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4 months ago
43 minutes

Wild West Podcast
The Forgotten Heroes of the Santa Fe Trail: Valor at Little Coon Creek
Send us a text Gunfire echoes across the Kansas plains, where desperate men take cover behind a hasty barricade of battered wagons and lifeless horses. With their ammunition dangerously low and hope dwindling, the situation looks grim—until one valiant soldier boldly steps forward, ready to embark on what appears to be a suicide mission. Welcome to the gripping tale of the Battle of Little Coon Creek, set in September 1868. This extraordinary tale chronicles how Corporal Patrick "Patty" O'Bo...
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4 months ago
18 minutes

Wild West Podcast
Between Two Worlds: How Broken Treaties Sparked the Southern Plains Conflict
Send us a text The violent clashes that erupted across the Kansas frontier in 1868 have often been shrouded in overly simplistic narratives. Historian Dr. Jeff Broome courageously challenges these conventional interpretations, revealing the intricate realities that drove Southern Plains tribes to warfare against white settlers. Through his remarkable research into Indian depredation claims—sworn testimonies encompassing nearly 800 storage feet at the National Archives—Broome uncovers perspec...
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4 months ago
31 minutes

Wild West Podcast
Prairie Dog Chronicles
Send us a text Step back in time to the American frontier of 1872, where massive buffalo herds still thundered across the plains in their ancient migration patterns. Through the eyes of George W. Brown, we witness these magnificent beasts as they moved with the seasons—northward in spring to the Dakotas and Canada, then southward again as winter approached, seeking shelter in the river valleys of the Great Plains. Brown's tale centers on a hunting expedition along the Smoky Hill River with h...
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4 months ago
12 minutes

Wild West Podcast
Bullets for Whiskey: The Truth Behind Old West Drinking
Send us a text Pour yourself a shot and settle in for an entertaining journey through Dodge City lore and fine spirits! Our debut episode of "Whiskey and Westerns on Wednesday" brings together host Mike King and Dodge City historian Brad Smalley to explore frontier legends while sampling Ardbeg 10, a smoky Islay scotch. We kick things off by shattering a persistent Wild West myth about the origin of "shot" glasses. Despite romantic notions of cowboys trading bullets for whiskey, historical r...
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4 months ago
26 minutes

Wild West Podcast
Send us a text Forget the postcard version of Dodge City. We open the door to the Great Western Hotel and step into a town intent on trading dust for dignity, noise for order, and short-term profits for a longer arc of respectability. The surprise is in the name itself: Great Western wasn’t a nod to cattle drives; it was a bid to borrow the prestige of Brunel’s railway and steamship, the Victorian shorthand for speed, reliability, and modern life. That branding choice tells us more about ambi...