He was called "The Elvis of Rodeo."

He was Larry Mahan.

We’ve got to admit something right off the bat here, folks. When we first looked at the biography of Larry Mahan, we thought, “Can we fit all of that into a podcast that we, believe it or not, try to keep to only seven to eight minutes ?”

But we’re sure Larry, one of the grittiest and greatest rodeo cowboys in history, wouldn’t want us just to give up.

So we’ll “cowboy up” and forge ahead to tell just some of the larger-than-life story of Larry Mahan, born this week, November 21, 1943.

Why do we get a spike in visitors from Europe every summer at The Cowboy? And what does that have to do with John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath?

It all comes from Route 66, the legendary highway, born this week in 1926.

This Week in The West is produced at The National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City.

You can read scripts of past episodes on our blog: https://nationalcowboymuseum.org/blog/

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Can't wait to see you here at The Cowboy!

We begin this week as any Oklahoman should, with one of the West’s greatest storytellers: William Penn Adair Rogers, known to the world as Will Rogers, born on this week, Nov. 4, 1879 in Oologah, Indian Territory.