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The Road to Now

The Wild West w/ Dick Kreck

The Road to Now

Benjamin Sawyer

Society & Culture, History

4.8628 Ratings

🗓️ 29 November 2021

⏱️ 50 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

During a trip to Denver, Bob and Ben were fortunate enough to sit down with journalist and historian Dick Kreck at the historic Brown Palace hotel for a conversation about the history of the Wild West and the city of Denver, Colorado in the late 19th and 20th centuries. Before retiring in 2009, Dick spent four decades working as a reporter for the San Francisco Examiner, The LA Times, and The Denver Post, and he has published numerous books on the history of Colorado and the west, including Murder at the Brown Palace: A True Story of Seduction and Betrayal (2003) and Hell on Wheels: Wicked Towns Along the Union Pacific Railway (2013).

This episode is a rebroadcast of RTN episode #7, which originally launched on June 23rd 2016. This rebroadcast was edited by Ben Sawyer.

Transcript

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0:00.0

I'm Ben Sawyer and this is The Road to Now.

0:07.0

Today's episode is about the history of the Wild West and a particular focus on Denver, Colorado.

0:13.0

Our guest is Dick Kreck, a man who's a journalist whose career span, decades working primarily for the Denver Post. He's also written

0:22.4

several books which are just great. Murder of the Brown Palace, a true story of seduction and

0:27.5

betrayal, hell on wheels, wicked towns along the Union Pacific Railway, a great writer and a guy

0:33.6

who does this because he loves it. This episode is deep, deep in the vault of the road to now.

0:40.7

This was originally episode number seven.

0:42.8

And Bob and I recorded it during this quick trip that we did out to Denver, Colorado.

0:47.0

And I just looked back in my calendar.

0:48.9

That was on June 15th, 2016.

0:52.7

That's more than five years ago.

0:58.0

And some of these episodes, I just really think about a lot years later. And I remember how much fun I had talking to Dick. And just the surprising

1:04.1

things I learned. This amazing time, we actually went to the Brown Palace Hotel, the one from

1:09.7

the book, remember Murder at the

1:11.0

Brown Palace. It was open in 1892, and it's just this classy joint downtown. We had come from having

1:17.9

a conversation with John Hickenlooper, then governor, today's senator. Whenever I met with Dick,

1:24.0

and we sat in the lounge at this old hotel. I smoked a cigar. It was, it was,

1:30.6

it really, like, felt like you were in a piece of history. And so this week, we're going to

1:35.5

re-air an episode and I just, I wanted to share this one again. I sat down and listened to it

1:39.9

outside in honor of the moment, smoked another cigar while listening to this. And the great thing

1:46.6

about some of these episodes like this conversation with Dick is that they just, they're timeless.

1:50.4

This conversation could have happened today. And I think that speaks to the power of how

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