The History of Denver and the Wild West w/ Dick Kreck
The Road to Now
Benjamin Sawyer
4.8 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 3 February 2025
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, we're revisiting one of our favorite conversations! During a past trip to Denver, Bob and Ben had the privilege of sitting down with journalist and historian Dick Kreck at the historic Brown Palace Hotel to discuss the fascinating history of Denver and its development in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
With more than four decades of experience as a reporter for The San Francisco Examiner, The LA Times, and The Denver Post, Kreck has also published numerous books on the history of Colorado and the American West. In this episode, he shares his incredible insights on western migration, the construction of the transcontinental railroad, and how the Denver of today reflects its storied past.
We are reairing this episode in memory of Dick Kreck, who passed away on December 4, 2024. You can read his obituary here.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | I'm Ben Sawyer. I'm Bob Crawford. And this is The Road to Now. |
| 0:07.0 | Well, we wrapped up another interview here out here in Denver, Colorado. We spoke with author and newspaper columnist Dick Kreck. |
| 0:16.0 | Ben, that was a fascinating interview. Oh, my God, he loves history. |
| 0:21.0 | He's written several history books about Denver and the West. |
| 0:24.4 | And he was, as a historian, he's talking to him, makes me realize why journalists tend to have an easier time selling history books than we historians do. |
| 0:32.8 | It was incredible. |
| 0:34.4 | Yeah, a keen intellect and an amazing insight into society and culture in our present time in the 21st century, late 20th century, and he definitely knows a lot about the late 19th century. |
| 0:52.2 | Yeah, and he's, what I love about his work is it has this unifying theme of making us as |
| 0:57.5 | Americans come face to face with the reality of where we came from. |
| 1:01.5 | You know, we like to think of, you know, the good old days and now everything's corrupt |
| 1:04.9 | and wrong. |
| 1:06.1 | But Dick's work and what we talked about in this interview, incredibly, it seems as if we were always human beings with our flaws and our passions |
| 1:14.5 | as we are now. |
| 1:17.0 | Breaking news. |
| 1:18.5 | There were no good old days. |
| 1:20.4 | Here's Dick Kreck. |
| 1:23.5 | Welcome to the Roads Now, and we'd like to welcome Dick Kreck, author, a former newspaper columnist, former newspaper writer for the Denver Post, the San Francisco Examiner in the LA Times. |
| 1:36.6 | Yes. |
| 1:37.3 | And currently he's been an author of some great books the past 20 years. |
| 1:44.6 | Helen Wheels is one of them. |
| 1:46.4 | And another one is murder at the Brown Palace. |
| 1:48.9 | And we are at the Brown Palace in downtown, Denver, Colorado. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Benjamin Sawyer, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Benjamin Sawyer and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.