Gunfighters

Author Bryan Burrough exhumes the gritty history of Old West gunfighters. From Billy the Kid to Wyatt Earp to John Wesley Hardin and dozens more, this collection of stories proves how very violent America's nineteenth century frontier actually was, and traces the blood-soaked history of the troubled men who made it that way. Follow now on Apple , Spotify , iHeart, and YouTube . See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Since the 1903 showing of The Great Train Robbery , film has steadily become our primary way to tell the stories of the American West to the larger world. More than a century’s worth of movies and television shows later, in this episode of The American West Dan, Randall, and guest Dr. Sara Dant reveal their favorite films about the West. Subscribe now wherever you listen to podcasts. YouTube , Spotify , Apple , iHeart , Pandora , Amazon . MeatEater on Instagram , Facebook , Twitter , Youtube , and Youtube Clips Check out more MeatEater's American History audio originals " The Long Hunters " and " Mountain Men " Subscribe to The MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop MeatEater Merch See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The 1538 distribution of Cabeza de Vaca’s Relacion about his shipwreck and trek across the Southwest marks the beginning of books that tell the stories of the American West to the larger world. Hundreds of thousands of books later, in this episode of The American West Dan, Randall, and guest Dr. Sara Dant reveal their favorite western authors and book choices. Subscribe now wherever you listen to podcasts. YouTube , Spotify , Apple , iHeart , Pandora , Amazon . MeatEater on Instagram , Facebook , Twitter , Youtube , and Youtube Clips Check out more MeatEater's American History audio originals " The Long Hunters " and " Mountain Men " Subscribe to The MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop MeatEater Merch See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Two ideas about living in the modern West, bioregionalism and rewilding, emerged in the 1970s and early 2000s, and while neither has gone mainstream they have influenced how residents who prioritize nature have made decisions about a new western lifestyle. Subscribe now wherever you listen to podcasts. YouTube , Spotify , Apple , iHeart , Pandora , Amazon . MeatEater on Instagram , Facebook , Twitter , Youtube , and Youtube Clips Check out more MeatEater's American History audio originals " The Long Hunters " and " Mountain Men " Subscribe to The MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop MeatEater Merch See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When the U.S. acquired the West with the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, President Thomas Jefferson dispatched two scientific expeditions to explore it. Lewis & Clark became legendary. The historical fiction that follows indicates that with a different outcome, Freeman and Custis would have been famous westerners, too. Here, then, is Part II. Subscribe now wherever you listen to podcasts. YouTube , Spotify , Apple , iHeart , Pandora , Amazon . MeatEater on Instagram , Facebook , Twitter , Youtube , and Youtube Clips Check out more MeatEater's American History audio originals " The Long Hunters " and " Mountain Men " Subscribe to The MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop MeatEater Merch See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When the U.S. acquired the West with the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, President Thomas Jefferson dispatched two scientific expeditions to explore it. Lewis & Clark became legendary. Like Apollo 13, Jefferson’s Red River Expedition into the West was a failure. This is how their story should have gone. Subscribe now wherever you listen to podcasts. YouTube , Spotify , Apple , iHeart , Pandora , Amazon . MeatEater on Instagram , Facebook , Twitter , Youtube , and Youtube Clips Check out more MeatEater's American History audio originals " The Long Hunters " and " Mountain Men " Subscribe to The MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop MeatEater Merch See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

One of the stories that will long define the American West in the modern era is the return of the wolf after a century of wholesale attempts to obliterate it. From New Mexico to Montana and west to the Pacific Coast, a five-million year-old native is on its way home again. Subscribe now wherever you listen to podcasts. YouTube , Spotify , Apple , iHeart , Pandora , Amazon . MeatEater on Instagram , Facebook , Twitter , Youtube , and Youtube Clips Check out more MeatEater's American History audio originals " The Long Hunters " and " Mountain Men " Subscribe to The MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop MeatEater Merch See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

With its many diverse, stupendous landscapes and public lands, the West has long been a region of bucket list adventures. A descent down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon has always been near the top of the list for almost everybody. Here’s what it’s like. Subscribe now wherever you listen to podcasts. YouTube , Spotify , Apple , iHeart , Pandora , Amazon . MeatEater on Instagram , Facebook , Twitter , Youtube , and Youtube Clips Check out more MeatEater's American History audio originals " The Long Hunters " and " Mountain Men " Subscribe to The MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop MeatEater Merch See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Endangered Species Act of 1973 is one of America’s most famous laws and contributions to world culture, yet half-a-century after its passage it has become yet another political lightning rod. But if you value having Thoreau’s “entire Earth,” the ESA is one of America’s best ideas. Subscribe now wherever you listen to podcasts. YouTube , Spotify , Apple , iHeart , Pandora , Amazon . MeatEater on Instagram , Facebook , Twitter , Youtube , and Youtube Clips Check out more MeatEater's American History audio originals " The Long Hunters " and " Mountain Men " Subscribe to The MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop MeatEater Merch See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the eyes of the world, the West’s several deserts have become defining landscapes for the modern region. But one of them, the Chihuahuan Desert, has produced the only large public lands found anywhere in Texas. Therein lies a story that shapes a state. Subscribe now wherever you listen to podcasts. YouTube , Spotify , Apple , iHeart , Pandora , Amazon . MeatEater on Instagram , Facebook , Twitter , Youtube , and Youtube Clips Check out more MeatEater's American History audio originals " The Long Hunters " and " Mountain Men " Subscribe to The MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop MeatEater Merch See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Calling on the photographic record made of the American West from 150 to 100 years ago, modern photographers have repeated many of the same scenes and found remarkable differences in the ecology and look of western landscapes. The question is, why such change? Subscribe now wherever you listen to podcasts. YouTube , Spotify , Apple , iHeart , Pandora , Amazon . MeatEater on Instagram , Facebook , Twitter , Youtube , and Youtube Clips Check out more MeatEater's American History audio originals " The Long Hunters " and " Mountain Men " Subscribe to The MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop MeatEater Merch See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

While conservation focused national parks creation on the vertical mountains and canyons of the West, the Great Plains ended up de-buffaloed and mostly ignored. But with new, 21st century approaches to reversing that historical slight, the Plains Serengeti is on its way back. Subscribe now wherever you listen to podcasts. YouTube , Spotify , Apple , iHeart , Pandora , Amazon . MeatEater on Instagram , Facebook , Twitter , Youtube , and Youtube Clips Check out more MeatEater's American History audio originals " The Long Hunters " and " Mountain Men " Subscribe to The MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop MeatEater Merch See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Almost exactly 500 years ago, a shipwrecked Spaniard named Cabeza de Vaca and three companions made the first trans-continental journey in the history of the American West. Then he wrote down his account of eight years in Native America, one of the great First Contact stories of all time. Subscribe now wherever you listen to podcasts. YouTube , Spotify , Apple , iHeart , Pandora , Amazon . MeatEater on Instagram , Facebook , Twitter , Youtube , and Youtube Clips Check out more MeatEater's American History audio originals " The Long Hunters " and " Mountain Men " Subscribe to The MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop MeatEater Merch See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Religion is often at the center of historical events in the West. The founding of modern Montana, in fact, happened when Native people famously pleaded for Christian missionaries. The question was whether the Christians actually understood what the Indians were asking for. Subscribe now wherever you listen to podcasts. YouTube , Spotify , Apple , iHeart , Pandora , Amazon . MeatEater on Instagram , Facebook , Twitter , Youtube , and Youtube Clips Check out more MeatEater's American History audio originals " The Long Hunters " and " Mountain Men " Subscribe to The MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop MeatEater Merch See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Charlie Russell and L.A. Huffman became famous for their nostalgic art about the Frontier world they experienced in the West. But with a fascination with what Russell called “Dreamtime Montana,” exactly what were they trying to tell us about the West’s future? Subscribe now wherever you listen to podcasts. YouTube , Spotify , Apple , iHeart , Pandora , Amazon . MeatEater on Instagram , Facebook , Twitter , Youtube , and Youtube Clips Check out more MeatEater's American History audio originals " The Long Hunters " and " Mountain Men " Subscribe to The MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop MeatEater Merch See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Not only do most Americans misunderstand the great variety in western places, but many westerners are similarly clueless. This episode makes a stab at explaining nature in a part of the West unfamiliar to many, the southwestern state of New Mexico. Subscribe now wherever you listen to podcasts. YouTube , Spotify , Apple , iHeart , Pandora , Amazon . MeatEater on Instagram , Facebook , Twitter , Youtube , and Youtube Clips Check out more MeatEater's American History audio originals " The Long Hunters " and " Mountain Men " Subscribe to The MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop MeatEater Merch See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A tangible and fascinating landscape record of the human past in the West exists in a form barely found elsewhere in America. So-called rock art, images incised and painted on rock faces, still reach out of the past to connect us with the thoughts, dreams, gods, and myths of ancient America. Subscribe now wherever you listen to podcasts. YouTube , Spotify , Apple , iHeart , Pandora , Amazon . MeatEater on Instagram , Facebook , Twitter , Youtube , and Youtube Clips Check out more MeatEater's American History audio originals " The Long Hunters " and " Mountain Men " Subscribe to The MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop MeatEater Merch See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the summer of 2019 a small group of us does a 12-day river descent from Alaska’s Brooks Range through the heart of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, experiencing a preserved slice of primeval western America that seems in perpetual danger of being destroyed by humanity’s relentless addiction to oil. Subscribe now wherever you listen to podcasts. YouTube , Spotify , Apple , iHeart , Pandora , Amazon . MeatEater on Instagram , Facebook , Twitter , Youtube , and Youtube Clips Check out more MeatEater's American History audio originals " The Long Hunters " and " Mountain Men " Subscribe to The MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop MeatEater Merch See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A road trip with Steven Rinella across the High Plains to the Blackwater Draw Unesco Site on the border of Texas and New Mexico leads to an assessment of 13,000 years of change in one western environment, where people have practiced every kind of life way from hunting elephants to turning the plains into cotton fields and oil country. Subscribe now wherever you listen to podcasts. YouTube , Spotify , Apple , iHeart , Pandora , Amazon . MeatEater on Instagram , Facebook , Twitter , Youtube , and Youtube Clips Check out more MeatEater's American History audio originals " The Long Hunters " and " Mountain Men " Subscribe to The MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop MeatEater Merch See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the 20th century peculiar landforms dismissed earlier in western history with the denigrating term “badlands” became compelling locations for scientists and artists in the West. First passed over as economically worthless, these barren, colorful landscapes were translated by painters like Georgia O’Keeffe into iconic imagery. Now many are national parks and wilderness areas. Thank you to our sponsor Velvet Buck . Subscribe now wherever you listen to podcasts. YouTube , Spotify , Apple , iHeart , Pandora , Amazon . MeatEater on Instagram , Facebook , Twitter , Youtube , and Youtube Clips Check out more MeatEater's American History audio originals " The Long Hunters " and " Mountain Men " Subscribe to The MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop MeatEater Merch See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.