This Week in the West: 100 Episodes!

Howdy folks, it’s the 28th of September 2026, and welcome to the 100th episode of This Week in The West.

I’m Seth Spillman, broadcasting from the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City.

Like any great journey into the American West, when we set out to make this podcast, we knew where we were going, but we didn’t know all the discoveries that lay ahead.

The goal on our horizon? Crack open more than 70 years of our Museum’s history and celebrate the subject matter we preserve and share. Like we say every week: We share stories of the people and events that shaped the history, art and culture of the American West—and those still shaping it today.

So what have we learned?

Well, the first lesson came pretty quick, on our very first episode: Oklahoma’s favorite son, Will Rogers, has said a lot of interesting and quotable remarks. But not everything attributed to Will in the history books and on the Internet was truly said by him, as confirmed by our friends at the Will Rogers Memorial Museum. That was duly noted and helped us to dive even deeper into trusted sources, many of them right here in our Dickinson Research Center.

Another lesson was much more visceral: Life in the West, especially in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries, was tough. Just surviving was a challenge worth celebrating.

Author Mari Sandoz was a child when she permanently lost vision in one eye to snow blindness after spending a day digging her family’s cattle out of a snowdrift.

Naturalist John Muir was working in a factory when he pierced his right cornea. His left eye then sank into “sympathetic” blindness.

Cotton Rosser, a burgeoning rodeo star, broke both of his legs in a horrible post hole auger accident. And no one ever wants to hear the phrase “horrible post hole auger accident.”

But what’s amazing about these tales is what happened next. Mari Sandoz became an acclaimed Western author, telling the stories of her family’s roots in the Great Plains and later earning induction into our Hall of Great Westerners.

Muir left factory life and headed West, becoming one of the nation’s most influential advocates for preserving its natural beauty and helping build the conservation movement that shaped America’s national parks.