Deadwood: The Town that Made the Wild West

Angry Planet

Matthew Gault

War, Politics, Conflict, Government, History, News

4.3 • 882 Ratings

🗓️ 21 November 2025

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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This week on Angry Planet we’re taking a break from the horrors of the present to explore horrors of a past distant enough now that they’re entertaining. But then, America found those horrors pretty entertaining at the time, too. Even when it was still a thriving community and a going concern, the town of Deadwood, South Dakota, was the subject of dimestore novels and tall tales.

Peter Cozzens is here with us to talk about his new book Deadwood: Gold, Guns, and Greed in the American West. Cozzens is a historian who has written 17 books that focus on the U.S. Civil War, the Wild West, and the American Indian Wars. His latest work is all about Deadwood and the wild cast of characters who inhabited it. Come sit with us a spell and learn about the real Calamity Jane, Wild Bill Hickok, and Al Swearengen.

“Power comes to any man who has the color.”
Black Elk and how the West Was Lost
Conflicting perceptions of Wild Bill Hickock
Professional gamblers
Creating Calamity Jane
Softening George Hearst
“In the West, women didn’t wear underwear.”
Deadwood burns
How history becomes a dime store novel
“The most diabolical town on the face of the earth.”

Deadwood: Gold, Guns, and Greed in the American West

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Love this podcast. Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give,
0:07.1	and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now.
0:18.0	Hello, and welcome to an episode of Angry Planet that's going to be a little different this week
0:24.2	because we're just going purely historical. So you can actually sit back, relax. You will not
0:30.7	be hearing Donald Trump's name. And very few. This is a cozy, angry planet episode?
0:38.0	A nice comforting?
0:39.2	Well, I'm wearing a sweater and a collared shirt, so yes, it's going to be a cozy episode.
0:45.1	So with us is Peter Cousins, who has written a number of books, history books, and we're going to talk this week about Deadwood. Deadwood,
0:57.9	I really hope most of you know, but maybe you don't, is a town in the West that has its
1:06.2	unique history, and they turned it into a fantastic HBO series.
1:12.9	So you may have heard of that.
1:14.7	But I would love it if you could just sort of introduce us to Deadwood itself and let people
1:23.7	know what's all about.
1:26.1	Sure.
1:26.7	The title of the book, the full title for those who are interested, is Deadwood, Gold, Guns and Greed in the American West,
1:35.0	which pretty much sums up what Deadwood was all about.
1:38.7	Deadwood was settled in 1875 illegally in the Black Hills of what is now South Dakota.
1:48.0	What was then Indian land, it belonged to the Lakota Sioux Indians.
1:54.0	It had been granted them by treaty in perpetuity.
1:59.0	But an expedition under Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer discovered gold
2:05.3	in the Black Hills in 1874. That resulted in a out-of-control chaotic gold rush to the Black Hills.
2:14.1	The principal place in which gold was found was in the vicinity of what became the town of Deadwood.
	...

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