Lost Highways: Dispatches from the Shadows of the Rocky Mountains

Apr 17 2024 371
Lost Highways: Dispatches from the Shadows of the Rocky Mountains Podcast artwork

History Colorado’s critically acclaimed podcast, Lost Highways: Dispatches from the Shadows of the Rocky Mountains, expands the history of the American West by exploring how overlooked stories from the past have shaped current world events and continue to impact our lives today. Each season, host Noel Black, producer and producers Maria Maddox and Dustin Hodge delve into stories from our shared past that we couldn't believe we'd never heard. Lost Highways is made possible by and a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and by a founding grant from the Sturm Family Foundation.

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Oral Histories of the Sand Creek Massacre from the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes Located in Oklahoma

Apr 17 2024 45 mins  
The Sand Creek Massacre was the deadliest day in Colorado history, and it changed Cheyenne and Arapaho people forever. On the morning of November 29, 1864, US troops under the command of Colonel John M. Chivington attacked a peaceful camp of Cheyenne and Arapaho people made up mostly of women, children, and elders along the Big Sandy Creek in Southeastern Colorado, near the present

American Gothic

Feb 21 2024 54 mins  
In 1881, white residents in the mining town of Gothic, Colorado lynched a Chinese man. Or did they? As the latest episode of Lost Highways investigates this reported act of anti-Chinese racial violence from Colorado’s past, we consider what it means to belong in the places we call home, and how such acts of violence continue to echo into the present—whether it actually happened

When History Burns

Feb 07 2024 63 mins  
With the new reality of megafires in the West, we take a look at what happens when history itself is destroyed and how we hold on to who and what we are when we lose the artifacts and records that tell our stories. We’ll take you from the Waldo Canyon Fire of 2012 near the town of Manitou Springs to the Denver suburbs of Louisville and Superior, Colorado where the 2021 Marshall F

From Sefarad to the San Luis Valley: Crypto-Judaism in the Southwest

Jan 24 2024 58 mins  
Colorado's San Luis Valley is the last place you might expect to find a centuries old lineage of Sephardic Jews. But a rare form of breast cancer and a host of odd traditions, artifacts, and rituals led researchers to discover an enclave of Crypto-Jews that fled Europe for the New World in the 16th Century to hide out in one of the most remote areas of the lower 48 states. On this

Mesa Verde of the Mysteries

Aug 02 2023 54 mins  
For nearly a century-and-a-half, archaeologists have been studying Mesa Verde in hopes of deciphering what happened to the Ancestral Puebloan people who lived and thrived there for so long. For many, it remains one of the great mysteries in the history of North America. On this episode of Lost Highways, we’ll explore the way that historians and archaeologists try to solve these k

A Wild Horse Isn't Just A Horse, Of Course

Apr 30 2023 52 mins  
On this episode of Lost Highways, we look at the mustang, the wild horse of American myth and legend. Though they’re widely revered as symbols of untameable American freedom in the West, the reality of the wild horse in the 21st Century is far less romantic. From the long history of the horse's evolution in North America to the helicopter roundups on rangeland in The West, we'll

How The Western Won

Apr 30 2023 48 mins  
Westerns often reveal more about the period when they were produced than the era they portray, but the genre won't die. On this episode of Lost Highways, we'll trace the rise of The Western in American pop culture, the significance of landscape in film, and the moral guidelines that set the boundaries for US films produced from the late-19th Century to the present. From classic to

The Ship Inside the Mountain: A Hidden History of NORAD and North America's Nuclear Defense

Apr 25 2023 63 mins  
On this episode of Lost Highways, we take you inside the history of NORAD, or North American Aerospace Defense Command. AND we’ll take you inside The Cheyenne Mountain Complex, the base that has stoked the pop cultural imagination of generations with movies and shows from Dr. Strangelove to Stargate to Interstellar. As the war in Ukraine and Chinese spy balloons have brought long

You Don't Know Barney Ford

Mar 15 2023 47 mins  
Barney Ford was one of the most successful and resilient Black businessmen in the early American West. He came in search of gold, owned and operated hotels and restaurants, lost them in fires, rebuilt them, and enjoyed a reputation as a King of hospitality in early Denver, Breckenridge, and Cheyenne, Wyoming. Much of his legend was built upon a 1963 biography called "Mr. Barney For

Cathay Williams/William Cathay: Buffalo Soldier

Feb 21 2023 52 mins  
Cathay Williams was an African American Woman who was conscripted to work as General Philip Sheridan's cook during the Civil War. When the war was over, she wanted to join one of the all-Black Army Regiments that later became known as the “Buffalo Soldiers." But women weren't allowed to serve at that time. So she put on men's clothes, changed her name to William Cathay, and spent