The Wild West Extravaganza
True Tales from the Old West!
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True Tales from the Old West!
Recent Episodes
Oct. 14, 2026
Sixteen Scalps: The Legend of Jerry Potts
In the fall of 1874, about three hundred men of Canada's newly formed North West Mounted Police were lost on the prairie, watching their horses die and searching for a whiskey fort they couldn't find. Their rescue came in the form of a short, bow-legged horse trader named Jerry Potts. The son of a Scottish fur trader and a Blood woman named Crooked Back, Potts lost his father to a bullet meant for someone else and was raised among traders and his mother's Blackfoot people. By adulthood, he had e
Oct. 7, 2026
Billy Bastards: Did Billy the Kid Have Children?
In July of 1881, Billy the Kid was shot and killed by Pat Garrett in a darkened bedroom at Fort Sumner, New Mexico. He was just twenty-one years old, possibly younger, and had spent the better part of three years among the young women of Fort Sumner, earning a reputation as something of a ladies' man. That same year, rumors swirled that Paulita Maxwell, the teenage sister of the man in whose bedroom Billy died, was carrying the Kid's child. More than a century later, a book by Elbert Garcia woul
Oct. 1, 2026
Slavery or States Rights? What Really Caused the Civil War
Was the Civil War fought over slavery or states' rights? Today we’ll examine the primary sources: the secession declarations of South Carolina, Mississippi, Georgia, and Texas, the ordinances of the other Confederate states, Alexander Stephens's Cornerstone Speech, Jefferson Davis's own words to the Confederate Congress in 1861, and Lincoln's letters on slavery and the Union. We'll also discuss the Corwin Amendment, the Crittenden Compromise, the tariff argument, why poor Southern farmers enlist
Sept. 9, 2026
Did Custer Deserve to Die?
Did Custer deserve to die at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, and did the Lakota steal the Black Hills? In this reaction episode of the Wild West Extravaganza, we’ll dig further into the history behind the Great Sioux War of 1876. Topics include the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, the Black Hills gold rush, Ulysses S. Grant's secret White House meeting, the Watkins report, the December 1875 ultimatum, and the 1980 Supreme Court ruling in United States v. Sioux Nation. We also cover the Crow, Cheye
Aug. 25, 2026
Fat Alice & the Battle of the Bordellos
In the spring of 1886, two El Paso madams went to war over a young prostitute named Bessie Colvin, and by the time the smoke cleared, one of them was shot in her privates and the other was under arrest for attempted murder. This is the story of Alice Abbott, the six-foot-tall brothel operator known as Fat Alice, and her rival across the street, Etta Clark, better known as Etta the Grasshopper. We cover how prostitution actually worked in the Old West, from the crib girls at the bottom to the sal
Aug. 12, 2026
A Short History of Dodge City
Dodge City, Kansas, earned its reputation as the wickedest little city in America in just a single year, back when it was still a lawless buffalo camp with no sheriff, no judge, and nothing more than a hole in the ground for a jail. In the years that followed, Texas cattle replaced the buffalo and transformed Dodge into the Queen of the Cowtowns. And the lawmen who kept a lid on the violence, like Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson, went on to become some of the most famous names of the Old West. Also