Golden Radio Theater
Home/Western/Frontier Fighters
Western · Syndicated

Frontier Fighters

January 5, 1938 – September 28, 1938 · 39 broadcasts

**Frontier Fighters** turned the opening of the American West into a weekly quarter-hour of living history. Each of its thirty-nine episodes framed one explorer, pioneer, or turning point -- La Salle claiming the Mississippi for France, Lewis and Clark reaching the Pacific with Sacagawea, the fall of the Alamo, the driving of the golden spike, Custer's last stand, the purchase of Alaska -- as a narrated exposition folded around a short dramatization, three to five voices carrying the scene in the seven minutes a 15-minute transcription left after the sponsor's music. The series was cut as electrical transcriptions by the Radio Transcription Company of America (TransCo) and later redistributed by Broadcasters Program Syndicate/Bruce Eells & Associates. Long dated to 1935 in the hobby, its only newspaper-documented run is the 1938 season the Peak-Hagedon Funeral Home sponsored over NBC affiliate KTSM in El Paso, Texas, Wednesday evenings from January 5 to September 28. Radio veteran Hanley Stafford -- who would become Fanny Brice's long-suffering 'Daddy' on The Baby Snooks Show -- is the one named performer; the writers, director, and the rest of the TransCo stock company went uncredited. Romanticized but broadly accurate, the vignettes remain a brisk, vivid tour of the frontier.

Collection status: 39 of 39 held (100% complete)

39 of 39 broadcasts available to stream.

◆ ◆ ◆

Episode Spine

1938

January 5, 1938 Rene Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle partial Listen (MP3, 32kbps)
In 1682 the French explorer canoes down the Mississippi, claims its whole basin for Louis XIV, and gives Louisiana its name.
January 12, 1938 Meriwether Lewis, William Clark and Sacagawea partial Listen (MP3, 32kbps)
President Jefferson's Corps of Discovery pushes overland to the Pacific, carried through by the Shoshone guide Sacagawea.
January 19, 1938 Zebulon Montgomery Pike Jr. partial Listen (MP3, 32kbps)
An army lieutenant pushes toward the Rockies' great divide and sights the Colorado peak that will carry his name.
January 26, 1938 John C. Fremont partial Listen (MP3, 32kbps)
Army topographer John C. Fremont, soon dubbed "The Pathfinder," is dispatched to chart the wilderness spanning the Missouri and the Rockies.
February 2, 1938 Christopher Houston 'Kit' Carson partial Listen (MP3, 32kbps)
A Santa Fe-bound wagon train out of Franklin, Missouri carries a barely-grown Kit Carson into frontier legend.
February 9, 1938 Jedediah S. Smith partial Listen (MP3, 32kbps)
The mountain man traps the northern plains along the Missouri, fighting his way through hostile country for furs.
February 16, 1938 Marcus Whitman partial Listen (MP3, 32kbps)
Physician-missionary Marcus Whitman spends himself among the Cayuse, his sacrifice helping keep the Oregon country under the American flag.
February 23, 1938 Dr. John McLoughlin partial Listen (MP3, 32kbps)
Quietly, the Hudson's Bay Company's own governor eases the way for American settlers pouring into Oregon Country.
March 2, 1938 The Donner Party partial Listen (MP3, 32kbps)
A westbound wagon train is trapped by mountain snow in one of the frontier's grimmest ordeals.
March 9, 1938 The Fall of the Alamo partial Listen (MP3, 32kbps)
In 1836 fewer than two hundred Texans stand and fall against a Mexican army of thousands.
March 16, 1938 General Stephen W. Kearney partial Listen (MP3, 32kbps)
Santa Fe falls without a shot as General Stephen Kearney's column marches in to end Mexican rule of the Southwest.
March 23, 1938 Brigham Young partial Listen (MP3, 32kbps)
Driven from Illinois, Brigham Young steers the Mormon exodus westward to the desert basin that will rise as Salt Lake City.
March 30, 1938 Joseph L. Meek partial Listen (MP3, 32kbps)
Mountain man Joseph Meek trades his traps for statesmanship, lobbying successfully to fold the Oregon country into the Union.
April 6, 1938 Lyman A. Cutler and Captain George E. Pickett partial Listen (MP3, 32kbps)
A single dead pig nearly ignites a border war on San Juan Island, defused only by one officer's steady refusal to strike the American flag.
April 13, 1938 Marshall and Sutter partial Listen (MP3, 32kbps)
A glint of gold in Sutter's millrace ignites the rush that remakes California forever.
April 20, 1938 William H. 'Buffalo Bill' Cody partial Listen (MP3, 32kbps)
A fourteen-year-old rider named William Cody signs on with the brand-new Pony Express, the job that sets him on the road to fame as Buffalo Bill.
April 27, 1938 Pike's Peak Rush partial Listen (MP3, 32kbps)
Word of gold and silver in the future Colorado Territory triggers a fresh stampede of prospectors into the Rockies.
May 4, 1938 The Santa Fe Trail partial Listen (MP3, 32kbps)
Years of danger along the Kansas City-to-Santa Fe road finally give way to safe passage for the wagon trains that follow it.
May 11, 1938 James Butler 'Wild Bill' Hickok partial Listen (MP3, 32kbps)
Outshooting a gang and surviving a hail of wounds, James Butler Hickok earns the nickname that follows him into legend: "Wild Bill."
May 18, 1938 Reverend Thomas Starr King partial Listen (MP3, 32kbps)
A San Francisco minister rallies California to the Union cause through the Civil War.
May 25, 1938 Captain Thomas Jonathan Jeffords partial Listen (MP3, 32kbps)
General Howard sends Captain Tom Jeffords to make peace with the Apache chief Cochise.
June 1, 1938 Colonel Grenville Dodge and Leland Stanford partial Listen (MP3, 32kbps)
Colonel Grenville Dodge and railroad baron Leland Stanford close the gap between their competing lines, completing America's first coast-to-coast rail link.
June 8, 1938 The Massacre at Taos partial Listen (MP3, 32kbps)
New Mexico's governor is murdered by an angry mob, and only gradually does order return to the territory in the years after.
June 15, 1938 Custer's Last Stand partial Listen (MP3, 32kbps)
Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer leads the Seventh Cavalry into the valley of the Little Bighorn and out of history.
June 22, 1938 Stephen F. Austin partial Listen (MP3, 32kbps)
The colonizer whose settlers laid Anglo Texas's foundation.
June 29, 1938 Oregon 54-40 partial Listen (MP3, 32kbps)
How Oregon joins the United States peacefully, the border with Canada fixed short of the war the "Fifty-Four Forty or Fight" slogan threatened.
July 6, 1938 Nevada and the Comstock Lode partial Listen (MP3, 32kbps)
Silver fever strikes Nevada as the fabulous Comstock Lode turns an obscure territory into a boomtown bonanza.
July 13, 1938 The Hero of Fort Phil Kearney partial Listen (MP3, 32kbps)
In brutal winter cold, John Phillips rides for help to save a Bozeman Trail outpost under siege.
July 20, 1938 Oklahoma Land Rush partial Listen (MP3, 32kbps)
A broken promise to the tribes becomes a starting gun: Washington throws open the Indian Territory and settlers race to claim it.
July 27, 1938 Oregon and the Pacific Republic partial Listen (MP3, 32kbps)
A Civil War-era scheme to raise an independent Pacific republic in the Northwest.
August 3, 1938 Annie D. Tallent partial Listen (MP3, 32kbps)
Annie Tallent is remembered as the earliest woman of European descent to reach the Black Hills of the Dakotas.
August 10, 1938 Ira Burton Perrine partial Listen (MP3, 32kbps)
One man's stubborn vision for taming the Snake River with a dam turns a stretch of Idaho desert into irrigated farmland.
August 17, 1938 Wells-Fargo partial Listen (MP3, 32kbps)
Stagecoach robbers meet their match as a new approach to guarding the express roads proves its worth.
August 24, 1938 Anson Pacely Killen Safford partial Listen (MP3, 32kbps)
Arizona's diminutive territorial governor makes public schools his life's crusade, earning the nickname "the Little Governor."
August 31, 1938 Arthur A. Denny and the City of Seattle partial Listen (MP3, 32kbps)
Arthur Denny and the settler party who staked out the future city of Seattle on Puget Sound.
September 7, 1938 Yellowstone National Park partial Listen (MP3, 32kbps)
The long campaign that won President Grant over to setting the Yellowstone country aside as the nation's first national park.
September 14, 1938 Eliza Ann Brooks partial Listen (MP3, 32kbps)
Eliza Ann Brooks carries her family west along the overland trails, one more mother whose courage the histories rarely name.
September 21, 1938 General Nelson A. Miles partial Listen (MP3, 32kbps)
General Nelson Miles is the officer at the center of Wounded Knee, the bloody close to the Dakota uprisings.
September 28, 1938 Alaska partial Listen (MP3, 32kbps)
The season closes with "Seward's Folly" vindicated: the vast, ridiculed Alaska purchase that history would prove a bargain.
The Story

**Frontier Fighters** turned the opening of the American West into a weekly quarter-hour of living history. Each of its thirty-nine episodes framed one explorer, pioneer, or turning point -- La Salle claiming the Mississippi for France, Lewis and Clark reaching the Pacific with Sacagawea, the fall of the Alamo, the driving of the golden spike, Custer's last stand, the purchase of Alaska -- as a narrated exposition folded around a short dramatization, three to five voices carrying the scene in the seven minutes a 15-minute transcription left after the sponsor's music. The series was cut as electrical transcriptions by the Radio Transcription Company of America (TransCo) and later redistributed by Broadcasters Program Syndicate/Bruce Eells & Associates. Long dated to 1935 in the hobby, its only newspaper-documented run is the 1938 season the Peak-Hagedon Funeral Home sponsored over NBC affiliate KTSM in El Paso, Texas, Wednesday evenings from January 5 to September 28. Radio veteran Hanley Stafford -- who would become Fanny Brice's long-suffering 'Daddy' on The Baby Snooks Show -- is the one named performer; the writers, director, and the rest of the TransCo stock company went uncredited. Romanticized but broadly accurate, the vignettes remain a brisk, vivid tour of the frontier.

Read the full story →
Gallery
Art pending

Related Shows