American West
What the Catalog Actually Contains
The episodes collected here under the title American West are, on the evidence, episodes of Horizons West — a thirteen-part Lewis and Clark docudrama produced at Capitol Records Studio in Hollywood in 1962–63 and broadcast on the Armed Forces Korea Network and the Far East Network between late 1965 and early 1966. The episode titles make it plain: "Shoshone Country," "Fort on the Columbia," "To the Pacific," "Lewis & the Blackfeet" — all confirmed Horizons West installments, tracing the Corps of Discovery from 1803 through 1806. No independent evidence supports the existence of a separate 1932 radio series called American West carrying these same titles, and the related shows once cited alongside it — The Air Adventures of Jimmy Allen (1933) and Captain Midnight (1938) — both postdate that supposed broadcast by years, which is its own quiet argument against the attribution.
The Show Itself
Horizons West starred Harry Bartel as Meriwether Lewis and John Anderson as William Clark. Scripts came from William Tundberg and Carl A. Tundberg, and William Lally produced. The full run was thirteen episodes; the catalog here holds eight of them — "Mr. Jefferson's Dream," "Dakota Winter," "Into the Unknown," "Shoshone Country," "To the Pacific," "Fort on the Columbia," and "Lewis & the Blackfeet." That last one, dramatizing Lewis's July 1806 encounter with the Blackfeet on the return leg, aired January 30, 1966 as episode twelve.
The production was made for the Armed Forces Radio & Television Service, meaning it was built for military audiences stationed abroad rather than for domestic commercial broadcast. That context shaped the series: straightforward, historically grounded storytelling for listeners who weren't necessarily tuning in by choice, packaged in a format that moved efficiently through one of American history's most thoroughly documented journeys.
What It Covered
The episodes follow the arc of the expedition from Jefferson's vision for western exploration through the crossing of the continent and back. Individual installments carry the Corps into Shoshone territory, down toward the Pacific coast, and through the confrontation with the Blackfeet on the return. The blend of historical incident and dramatized dialogue was typical of the docudrama form — anchored in the actual record while giving the characters room to speak and react in ways that held a radio audience's attention. For AFRTS listeners half a world from home, a story about Americans crossing their own continent for the first time had a particular kind of weight.