The Magic City of the Southwest

Rhubarb is all over the San Juan Mountains in Southwest Colorado. Where did it come from? And what does an abandoned road in producer Jamie Wanzek's backyard have to do with it?

Content warning: This story mentions suicide ideation.

Reported, written, and produced by Jamie Wanzek

Edited by Kirbie Bennett

Music: 

You'll Never Catch Me Crawling Back to You  Roy Williams

The Poppy Red Garden

Loner on a Cliff

The High Lonesom...

"This anthology is a portal," says Kinsale Drake. "Art, poetry, songs, stories - those things are both ancient and alive right now, and those are our superpowers."

In this episode of The Magic City, co-host Kirbie Bennett speaks with Kinsale Drake and Darcie Little Badger, co-editors of a book titled Beyond the Glittering World: An Anthology of Indigenous Feminisms and Futurisms. Throughout the interview, they discuss the importanc...

Today, Durango Fiesta Days is popular for its late-summer rodeos. When the event started in 1935, it was called the Spanish Trails Fiesta. 

On this episode of the Magic City, Kirbie travels back to the 1950s and explores what the fiesta looked like, including stories about Indigenous people camping along the Animas River. What was the Spanish Trails Fiesta like for them? 

Written and produced by Kirbie Bennett. 

Musi...

In 1881, an artist from New York visited Southwest Colorado when he created a print called "The Magic City of the Southwest." To the artist, 'magic' referred to industry, gold, and the illusion of the western frontier.  On season 2 of The Magic City, we redefine 'magic'. We tell stories of the past, present, and future of this place. 

We'll see you soon for more stories from The Magic City of the Southwest. 

Written ...

In the 1950's residents living along the Piedra and San Juan Rivers in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico learned that their communities would be condemned and indundated by reservoir water, because a federal water reclamation project would move forward.

This episode tells the story of what happened to Raymond Gallegos' family when they were forced to relocate, and the lives they left behind.

Reporting, production, and ...

Today, you can find just a few remnant apple orchards in southwest Colorado. But in the early 1900s, one man envision that Montezuma County, Colorado would become an apple Mecca.

Was Jasper Hall's dream for this arid landscape an historic footnote, or was he a visionary ahead of his time.

This episode tells the story of a man who some people called the Fruit Wizard of Montezuma County.

Reporting, production, and musical scoring by ...

In the 1980's Janice Sanders was one of the few women who worked underground at the Sunnyside Mine, northeast of Silverton, Colorado. She enjoyed her career as a geologist, and she loved working underground. but she had to endure sexism and hateful treatment by some of her male co-workers.

The episode tells the story of one woman's experience working underground in the sunset years of hardrock mining in Colorado.

Reporting, product...

History is under our feet and all around us. Old buildings, streets, statues and signs. We drive by remnants of the past every day, without giving them a second thought.

In this episode, the story of one man’s close encounter with a forgotten piece of history.

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Written and produced by Adam Burke and Jamie Wanz...

For more than 50 years, Ed Singer has used oil paints on canvas to depict life in the Navajo Nation. His style mixes realism and expressionism, and he employs techniques drawn from European oil painting masters.  Singer is part of a generation of Indigenous artists from the 1960s and 1970s who asserted a visual sovereignty in their paintings, to confront Native American stereotypes, and depict Native American life in a mo...

In the 1970's, a group of counter-culture denizens in Durango, Colorado, started a festival aimed at curing the winter doldrums. The end of January was a slow, sleepy time of the year back then.

45 years later, Snowdown is an annual event that brings together city boosters, businesses along Main Street, locals, and tourists for a week of costumes, quirky fun and events. Each Snowdown has a theme, and over the years, festival organi...

Durango loves to promote its western frontier town image. It's easy to envision the bustling boardwalks in the late 1800s and imagine an incorporated town sprouting from the strength and will of those early settlers. 

This episode of The Magic City of the Southwest is the real story behind the facade.

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Thanks to historians Robert McDaniel and Thomas Andrews for their help and guidance on this story...

In 2022, mobile home park residents in Durango, Colorado, fought to keep their community from being purchased by an out-of-state corporate owner. The Westside Mobile Home Park had been Alejandra Chavez's home since she arrived from Mexico at 12 years old. In the fight to help her community, Chavez was caught between an instinct to keep a low profile and the need for her leadership.

In this episode of The Magic City of the Southwest...