This is an I-Heart podcast.

This is our American stories, and our next story comes to us from a man who is simply known as the History Guy.

His videos are watched by hundreds of thousands of people of all ages on YouTube.

The History Guy is also a regular contributor here on our American stories.

The Lone Ranger with his cry of Hio Silver has become an American institution ranking

up there with Paul Bunyan in

the realm of folklore and legend. Here's the history guy with the fascinating story behind the

Lone Ranger.

The world, it seems, enjoys a good Western. Movies about the American Wild West were the most popular genre in Hollywood from the early

beginning of film through the 1960s, and the genre of Western was being used to describe

films as early as 1912.

Stories in the American West have been popular across a number of genres from books and comic

books to film and radio. Wild West Adventures, usually featuring cowboys and gunslingers,

have gained worldwide popularity as popular in Europe and Asia,

it seems, as they are in the nation where they supposedly happen.

But the Western as an entertainment genre only rarely depicts the reality of life on the American frontier.

And the intersection of fiction and reality offers an interesting glimpse into both the world of the entertainment viewer and the real Western pioneer. And there is a great example of that

in one of the most popular of the fictional Western heroes and the little-known real Western

lawmen who were the closest thing to the Hollywood legend.

So return to us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear.

From out of the past come the thundering hoofbeats of the great horse, Silver.

Are you silver! Away!

...