Lost Highways - Season 1
September - November 2019
Season one explores the roots of familiar contemporary topics such as talk-radio culture, same-sex marriage, and American Indian mascots. It also mines insights from stories on Japanese incarceration and forced relocation during World War II, minority settlements, and the “Red Elvis,” a man who might have been John Denver before he defected to cold-war East Germany.
Tyler Hill interviews Clela Rorex in her home in Longmont, 2019.
Episode 1: Six Gay Weddings and a Horse
In 1975, a newly-elected Boulder County Clerk named Clela Rorex had just settled into her job when two men walked into the courthouse and asked for a marriage license. Her decision would reverberate across four decades.
Guests: Anthony Sullivan | Clela Rorex | Dr. Shawn C. Fetting | Daniel Rivers | Nanvy Cot | Governor Jared Polis | Representative Brianna Titone
Oral Histories: Clela Rorex & Timothy M. Fuller from the Carnegie Library for Local History in Boulder, Colorado.
Transcript from "Six Gay Weddings & a Horse" podcast
The first evacuees arrive at the Granada railroad station on their way to the Granada Relocation Center, also known as Camp Amache, in Prowers County on August 28, 1942.
Episode 2: Bonsai Behind Barbed Wire
Tyler and Noel set out to investigate an alleged feud between two bickering bonsai clubs. But their quest leads them instead to Amache, a WWII prison camp for people of Japanese ancestry in southeast Colorado.
Guests: Thomas S. Elias | Patrick Allen | Gary Matsuda | Harold "Hal" Sasaki | William Wei | Naomi Hirahara | Hanako Wakatsuki | bob Fuchigami | Dr. Bonnie Clark | Robert Baran | Ryan Neil | Dave Regan
Transcript from "Bonsai Behind Barbed Wire" podcast
Alan Berg listens to the tape of a man who threatened him, November 6, 1979.
Episode 3: The Passion of Alan Berg
Noel and Tyler spin the dial on the talk radio time machine to meet Alan Berg, the loud-mouthed Denver media personality who helped pioneer the “outrage for profit” business model that drives political media today. Berg was on his way to stardom until his assassination by neo-Nazis in 1984.
Guests: Jeffrey Berry | Lee Larson | Andrew Horvitz | Judith Berg | Ken Hamblin | Peter Boyles | Anath White | Stephen Singular | Kevin Flynn | Mark Potok
Transcript from "The Passion of Alan Berg" podcast
O.T. Jackson is pictured here with a child in their melon patch in Dearfield, around 1915.
Episode 4: The Dearest Field
In the aftermath of the American Civil War, all-Black settlements sprang up throughout the West as formerly enslaved people and their descendants sought to build a better life. In this episode, Noel and Tyler look back at one of those communities in Colorado.
Guests: Julie Peterson | Stephanie Daniel | LueCresea Horne | George Junne | Jake Friefeld | Angela Bates | Karla Adams | Quintard Taylor | Phyllis Howard
Oral Histories: Beatrice Rainey | Walker Groves | Charles Rothwell
Transcript from "The Dearest Field" podcast
Episode 5: Rock Around the Bloc
Born and raised in Wheatridge, Colorado, Dean Reed moved to Hollywood at the age of 19 in an attempt to become a star. He was groomed to be a teen pop idol before becoming a socialist during a tour of South America in the 1960s. He eventually settled in East Germany, where, despite remaining unknown in the United States, he became one of the socialist world's biggest stars. In this episode, Noel and Tyler dig into Reed's archives at History Colorado as they reconsider the legacy of the Red Elvis.
Guests: Will Roberts | Ramon Reed | Andrea Witte | Nick Hayes | {eter Schmelz | Victor Grossman | Frances Stonor Saunders
From the Archives: Ruth Anna Brown, interviewed by Will Roberts in America Rebel: The Dean Reed Story; Dean Reed, featured in American Rebel and 60 Minutes.
Transcript from "Rock around the Bloc" podcast
Episode 6: Mascots, Mask Off
There are still more than a thousand public high schools across the country that use stereotypes and caricatures of American Indians as their mascots, and Colorado is no exception. We still have more than 30 of them. On this episode of Lost Highways, we look at the history of American Indian mascots and the different ways that tribes, teams, governments, and communities have grappled with the controversy.
Guests: Solomon Little Owl | Peggy Ford Waldo | Jeff Rasp | Dr. C. Richard King | Lawrence Baca | Darius Smith | Lindsey Nichols | Cliff Smith | Lee Spoonhunter | Ernest House, Jr. | Dr. Stephanie Fryberg
Participants of the "Annual Spiritual Healing Run-Walk": Hunter Lone Dog | Darien Barreza | Zianna Hubbard
Strasburg High School Alumni: Maddi Douglas | Victoria Mariano | Amity Howard
Transcript of "Mascot, Mask Off [Update]" episode of Lost Highways
Bonus: Game Changers
One hundred years ago, a pitcher with a nasty curveball and a mind for business named Rube Foster formed "the Negro Leagues." In a story that in many ways mirrors American history from Reconstruction to the Civil Rights Movement, African Americans in baseball shaped the game and American society beyond the ballfield. It’s a story that runs, surprisingly, straight through Denver and an event that called itself “The Little World Series of the West.”
Transcript from "Game Changers" podcast