Fort Laramie

About Fort Laramie

Fort Laramie is an old time radio western from CBS, broadcast from January 22 to October 28, 1956, and you can listen to it free online here, around the clock or as a podcast. Raymond Burr, just before he became TV's Perry Mason, stars as Captain Lee Quince of the U.S. Cavalry at the real frontier post of Fort Laramie in Wyoming. With him are Vic Perrin as Sergeant Gorce, Harry Bartell as Lieutenant Seiberts and Jack Moyles as Major Daggett. It was Burr's only starring role on radio.

The show comes from Norman Macdonnell, the producer-director of Gunsmoke, with Gunsmoke's writers, its sound men and many of its actors, and it has the same grown-up tone. Macdonnell told his writers that historical accuracy came first, so the stories use the real names of the fort's buildings, such as the sutler's store and Old Bedlam. He called the series "a monument to ordinary men who lived in extraordinary times," whose enemies were heat, cold, disease and boredom "and perhaps last of all, hostile Indians."

Kathleen Hite, the first woman staff writer at CBS, wrote most of the scripts, including some of the best. Like Gunsmoke, Fort Laramie gives women strong parts and treats Native Americans with sympathy, and the sound is made with care: saddles creak, rifles crack and chairs scrape before the footsteps start. Radio historian Jack French wrote that if not for Gunsmoke, it could be called the best adult western ever aired. The series ended after ten months when Perry Mason took Burr to television, and every episode survives.

What you’ll hear

• Raymond Burr as Captain Quince, a rare good-guy lead for an actor best known then for playing villains.
• Frontier history taken seriously, from galvanized Yankees and scurvy to a story closely based on the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864.
• Howard McNear, radio's Doc Adams, as Pliny the sutler, and Gunsmoke regulars such as Parley Baer, Virginia Gregg, Sam Edwards and John Dehner.
• Real figures of the Plains, including the Lakota chiefs Spotted Tail and Red Cloud.
• Careful sound effects by Gunsmoke's team of Bill James, Ray Kemper and Tom Hanley.
• Lighter stories too, such as a moral-improvement committee getting beer banned at the post.

Where to start

• Begin with "Playing Indian" (1956), the first broadcast, in which Quince traps horse thieves trying to blame the Arapaho.
• "Shavetail" (1956) introduces Lieutenant Seiberts, a green officer who loses 35 horses on his first patrol.
• "The Massacre" (1956), with John Dehner as a zealous major, and "The Woman at Horse Creek" (1956) show the series at its most serious.
• Listen live any time, or follow the podcast, which adds a new episode every week in broadcast order.

Fort Laramie on the radio

CBS Radio, 1956. With Raymond Burr, Old Bedlam, General William T. Sherman.

Where the recordings come from

The Fort Laramie recordings here come from the Old Time Radio Researchers' Fort Laramie Singles set (38 episodes), hosted by the Internet Archive. Our thanks to the Old Time Radio Researchers, the volunteers who found, dated and assembled the set, and to the Archive and the collectors whose uploads it rests on. The sound is our remaster of those files (rumble, hiss and hum cleaned out, levelled to steady broadcast loudness); the recordings themselves are theirs. About our sources.

Every Fort Laramie episode: the full list, with air dates and stories

More to listen to

• Gunsmoke
• Have Gun, Will Travel
• Frontier Gentleman
• Tales of the Texas Rangers
• The Six Shooter

Spotted a wrong date, title or name? Report a mistake · Missing a series? Request a show · Suggest a note

Questions