Episode Details

Wendy Corr:

Well, hey there, folks, welcome to The Roundup! We are a Cowboy State Daily podcast, and we focus on interesting people here in the Cowboy State. And I am so thrilled today to bring you not just one guest, but a whole panel of guests whose expertise is in the American West, and we're going to have a great conversation today with three really incredible authors.

First though, I want to make sure that people know about our partner organization, the Wyoming Business Alliance. The Wyoming Business Alliance has a really fantastic resource, a lot of resources for business people here in Wyoming, and it's starting with their podcast. They've got the "Business From the Basement" podcast brought to you by the Wyoming Business Alliance.

So anyone who is a news junkie, who is a business person, an entrepreneur, if you've got an interest in building your business and being a better business person, please don't miss out on their podcast. We are glad to promote them and glad to have them as partners with us.

But talking about business, the business of history, and history is where we, so many of us who choose to live in Wyoming, history is what keeps us here- it's what lights us up when we go on a road trip and we see one of those Wayside signs. We learn just a little bit about the people who lived here before us.

And the people that we have on today's Roundup are people and authors who have researched the American West, and they've made it their business to know what our history is, and so I am very pleased to have join us today, Candy Moulton!

Candy is a regular contributor to Cowboy State Daily. She is the one who's headed up this American West experience segment that we have here on Cowboy State Daily.

We also have Rod Miller - and we're going to call him Rod Miller because that's his name, not to be confused with the Rod Miller of the cowboy hat and long beard fame, who is also a columnist for Cowboy State Daily. RB Miller is who you're going to see if you're looking up his byline. RB Miller, he has just some phenomenal stories that he's shared with us.

Also, we have Jim Crutchfield, who, we've had some technical difficulties today. I mean, what is a day on a computer without a technical difficulty? Which is why you're just seeing a picture of Jim today. But James Crutchfield is also one of our contributors for the American West series of articles.

And so I'm gonna start off by going to Candy, because Candy, you're the reason we're all together today. Candy, you've got just years of experience in writing. You started off at the Saratoga newspaper. You and I had a great podcast several months ago now, you were one of my first podcast guests, but tell us just a little bit briefly about your purpose and your role here in bringing all of these amazing authors together.

Candy Moulton:

Thanks, first of all, Wendy for bringing us together today. In spite of our technical difficulties, it is a thrill to see everybody and to be involved in this project. And it kind of started on a crazy idea. I have a lot of crazy - my family knows I have wackadoodle ideas.

And so it came about because I'd been doing a little bit of writing for Cowboy State Daily. And I love to write history, so I've been writing some history pieces, and I write a column, and my column tends to have a history bent to it as well. And I could see that there were some opportunities in the publication in Cowboy State Daily, the whole operation, for more stories about the American West, and particularly history of the West.

And then I realized that the next year is the 200th anniversary of the first rendezvous. And the rendezvous started in Wyoming, 1825, down at Burnt Fork on the Henry's Fork. And it was kind of a small ga