{
  "id": "jD1aIl8gnOaF0vhkFSHiI",
  "episodeId": "9TIgBZYy2NmujYqUSpCk9",
  "revisionNumber": 1,
  "turns": [
    {
      "characterId": "52GgD-BO3Ue8LMuXkv1Fi",
      "speakerName": "Marv Sundstrom",
      "dialog": "There's a story around here that on a cold December day in 1908, people stood out by the bridge at Brooklyn and watched a train roll into Steamboat for the first time. And there's another story that says that didn't happen until the winter of 1909.",
      "direction": "unhurried, setting the hook"
    },
    {
      "characterId": "NsVPkfhqleCIGnwLwCSbw",
      "speakerName": "Dana Reyes",
      "dialog": "Both versions get told like they're the version. We are not going to resolve that today. We just want to be honest that the record disagrees with itself.",
      "direction": "dry"
    },
    {
      "characterId": "YN_5APZ5fDDOlHFqCd559",
      "speakerName": "Theo Ames",
      "dialog": "This is Back in the Boat. Today: the rails show up, a Norwegian shows up a few years later, and between them they more or less decide what this town becomes.",
      "direction": "warm intro"
    },
    {
      "characterId": "52GgD-BO3Ue8LMuXkv1Fi",
      "speakerName": "Marv Sundstrom",
      "dialog": "Let's start with the railroad, because the railroad is the bigger machine. David Moffat put together the Denver, Northwestern and Pacific in 1903. Most people just called it the Moffat Road.",
      "direction": "plain"
    },
    {
      "characterId": "NsVPkfhqleCIGnwLwCSbw",
      "speakerName": "Dana Reyes",
      "dialog": "The idea was Denver to Salt Lake City. The first stretch got finished in 1904, out of Denver, up and over Rollins Pass.",
      "direction": "matter of fact"
    },
    {
      "characterId": "YN_5APZ5fDDOlHFqCd559",
      "speakerName": "Theo Ames",
      "dialog": "Rollins Pass in winter with a steam train. That alone tells you what this project was.",
      "direction": "curious"
    },
    {
      "characterId": "52GgD-BO3Ue8LMuXkv1Fi",
      "speakerName": "Marv Sundstrom",
      "dialog": "Ambitious and expensive. Moffat spent his entire personal fortune on it. He died in New York City on the 18th of March, 1911, and he had not gotten to Salt Lake.",
      "direction": "quiet"
    },
    {
      "characterId": "NsVPkfhqleCIGnwLwCSbw",
      "speakerName": "Dana Reyes",
      "dialog": "The line reached Craig by 1913, and that's where it stopped. Craig became the terminus. The Salt Lake part never happened.",
      "direction": "flat, factual"
    },
    {
      "characterId": "YN_5APZ5fDDOlHFqCd559",
      "speakerName": "Theo Ames",
      "dialog": "So when we talk about the train reaching Steamboat, we're talking about somewhere in that window. 1908 in one telling, 1909 in another.",
      "direction": "clarifying"
    },
    {
      "characterId": "52GgD-BO3Ue8LMuXkv1Fi",
      "speakerName": "Marv Sundstrom",
      "dialog": "Right. I've heard the Brooklyn bridge story my whole life. People cheering as it crossed. I want it to be 1908 because that's the version I grew up with. I can't tell you it's the right one.",
      "direction": "honest, a little rueful"
    },
    {
      "characterId": "NsVPkfhqleCIGnwLwCSbw",
      "speakerName": "Dana Reyes",
      "dialog": "That's the thing about tidy origin stories. Somebody always polished them before they got to us.",
      "direction": "wry"
    },
    {
      "characterId": "YN_5APZ5fDDOlHFqCd559",
      "speakerName": "Theo Ames",
      "dialog": "Okay, so here's the plain question. What was Steamboat doing for money before the train got here?",
      "direction": "genuine"
    },
    {
      "characterId": "52GgD-BO3Ue8LMuXkv1Fi",
      "speakerName": "Marv Sundstrom",
      "dialog": "Ranching, mostly. Cattle, hay, some sheep. Whatever you could grow or graze in the valley and get to a buyer the hard way. Moving anything out of here before the rails was a real undertaking.",
      "direction": "grounded"
    },
    {
      "characterId": "NsVPkfhqleCIGnwLwCSbw",
      "speakerName": "Dana Reyes",
      "dialog": "And that's what the railroad changes. Not just that people can come in. Cattle and coal and timber can go out. It's a two-way door.",
      "direction": "thinking out loud"
    },
    {
      "characterId": "YN_5APZ5fDDOlHFqCd559",
      "speakerName": "Theo Ames",
      "dialog": "The ability to leave and the ability to arrive, in the same piece of infrastructure.",
      "direction": "landing it"
    },
    {
      "characterId": "52GgD-BO3Ue8LMuXkv1Fi",
      "speakerName": "Marv Sundstrom",
      "dialog": "And then, right on the heels of that, the Norwegian shows up.",
      "direction": "shifting"
    },
    {
      "characterId": "NsVPkfhqleCIGnwLwCSbw",
      "speakerName": "Dana Reyes",
      "dialog": "Carl Howelsen. Born Karl Hovelsen in Norway. He'd been working for Barnum and Bailey, of all things, and they gave him the nickname The Flying Norseman.",
      "direction": "amused"
    },
    {
      "characterId": "YN_5APZ5fDDOlHFqCd559",
      "speakerName": "Theo Ames",
      "dialog": "A ski jumper in the circus.",
      "direction": "delighted"
    },
    {
      "characterId": "52GgD-BO3Ue8LMuXkv1Fi",
      "speakerName": "Marv Sundstrom",
      "dialog": "That is not a sentence I ever expect to get used to. He arrives in Steamboat in 1913. Some sources say 1912. Same problem as the train — the record isn't clean.",
      "direction": "matter of fact"
    },
    {
      "characterId": "NsVPkfhqleCIGnwLwCSbw",
      "speakerName": "Dana Reyes",
      "dialog": "And in February 1914 he organizes the first Winter Carnival. Ski jumping, cross-country races, out on Woodchuck Hill. The accounts say around two thousand people came to watch the jumping.",
      "direction": "even"
    },
    {
      "characterId": "YN_5APZ5fDDOlHFqCd559",
      "speakerName": "Theo Ames",
      "dialog": "Two thousand. In a valley this size, in February, in 1914. That's not a local turnout. People traveled for that.",
      "direction": "doing the math"
    },
    {
      "characterId": "NsVPkfhqleCIGnwLwCSbw",
      "speakerName": "Dana Reyes",
      "dialog": "That's the part I keep circling. This is, as far as I can tell, the first time Steamboat is being marketed to outsiders. Not sold as a place to live. Sold as a place to come see something.",
      "direction": "documentarian"
    },
    {
      "characterId": "52GgD-BO3Ue8LMuXkv1Fi",
      "speakerName": "Marv Sundstrom",
      "dialog": "And they could only come see it because the train got them here.",
      "direction": "connecting the pieces"
    },
    {
      "characterId": "YN_5APZ5fDDOlHFqCd559",
      "speakerName": "Theo Ames",
      "dialog": "That's the hinge, isn't it. The rails give you access. Howelsen gives you a reason to use that access in the winter, which nobody had before.",
      "direction": "working it through"
    },
    {
      "characterId": "52GgD-BO3Ue8LMuXkv1Fi",
      "speakerName": "Marv Sundstrom",
      "dialog": "Then in 1915, Howelsen and the Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club build Howelsen Hill for the second Carnival. He picked the site because the steep terrain worked for jumping.",
      "direction": "plain"
    },
    {
      "characterId": "NsVPkfhqleCIGnwLwCSbw",
      "speakerName": "Dana Reyes",
      "dialog": "And that hill is still there. Oldest ski area in continuing use in Colorado. Something like a hundred Olympic skiers have trained on it.",
      "direction": "understated"
    },
    {
      "characterId": "YN_5APZ5fDDOlHFqCd559",
      "speakerName": "Theo Ames",
      "dialog": "Nearly a hundred. From a hill a Norwegian circus performer picked because it looked steep enough.",
      "direction": "quiet awe"
    },
    {
      "characterId": "52GgD-BO3Ue8LMuXkv1Fi",
      "speakerName": "Marv Sundstrom",
      "dialog": "Now, I want to be careful. It's tempting to say Moffat and Howelsen made Steamboat. Two men, five years apart, and here we all are.",
      "direction": "cautioning"
    },
    {
      "characterId": "NsVPkfhqleCIGnwLwCSbw",
      "speakerName": "Dana Reyes",
      "dialog": "That is a very clean story.",
      "direction": "dry"
    },
    {
      "characterId": "52GgD-BO3Ue8LMuXkv1Fi",
      "speakerName": "Marv Sundstrom",
      "dialog": "Too clean. There were ranchers here already. There were businesses. There were people doing the daily work of a town, and there were people who'd been on this land a lot longer than any of us. A train and a ski jumper didn't make a place out of nothing.",
      "direction": "firm but calm"
    },
    {
      "characterId": "YN_5APZ5fDDOlHFqCd559",
      "speakerName": "Theo Ames",
      "dialog": "But they did change what the place was for.",
      "direction": "carefully"
    },
    {
      "characterId": "NsVPkfhqleCIGnwLwCSbw",
      "speakerName": "Dana Reyes",
      "dialog": "That's the more honest version. The town existed. The rails and the Carnival changed the audience. Steamboat starts being something performed for people who don't live here.",
      "direction": "pointed"
    },
    {
      "characterId": "52GgD-BO3Ue8LMuXkv1Fi",
      "speakerName": "Marv Sundstrom",
      "dialog": "And Howelsen goes back to Norway in 1922. He doesn't stay to see what he started.",
      "direction": "quiet"
    },
    {
      "characterId": "YN_5APZ5fDDOlHFqCd559",
      "speakerName": "Theo Ames",
      "dialog": "That surprised me. I always assumed he lived out his life here.",
      "direction": "honest"
    },
    {
      "characterId": "NsVPkfhqleCIGnwLwCSbw",
      "speakerName": "Dana Reyes",
      "dialog": "A lot of people assume that. He was here about a decade, give or take, depending on which arrival date you believe.",
      "direction": "wry"
    },
    {
      "characterId": "52GgD-BO3Ue8LMuXkv1Fi",
      "speakerName": "Marv Sundstrom",
      "dialog": "So by 1922 you've got a town connected to Denver by rail, a ski hill with his name on it, a Winter Carnival that draws a crowd, and the man himself back in Norway.",
      "direction": "summing"
    },
    {
      "characterId": "YN_5APZ5fDDOlHFqCd559",
      "speakerName": "Theo Ames",
      "dialog": "And a railroad that never got to Salt Lake, and a founder who died broke.",
      "direction": "matching the tone"
    },
    {
      "characterId": "NsVPkfhqleCIGnwLwCSbw",
      "speakerName": "Dana Reyes",
      "dialog": "Two big ambitions, both of them partial. And out of the partial version, you get modern Steamboat.",
      "direction": "reflective"
    },
    {
      "characterId": "52GgD-BO3Ue8LMuXkv1Fi",
      "speakerName": "Marv Sundstrom",
      "dialog": "That's a decent place to leave it. Two dates we can't pin down, one hill we can still ski, and a lot we still don't know.",
      "direction": "closing"
    },
    {
      "characterId": "YN_5APZ5fDDOlHFqCd559",
      "speakerName": "Theo Ames",
      "dialog": "Thanks for sitting with us. This has been Back in the Boat.",
      "direction": "warm sign-off"
    },
    {
      "characterId": "NsVPkfhqleCIGnwLwCSbw",
      "speakerName": "Dana Reyes",
      "dialog": "If you know a version of the Brooklyn bridge story we didn't get to, or somebody in your family remembered the Carnival, we'd like to hear it. That's how the record gets less tidy, and better.",
      "direction": "dry, inviting"
    }
  ],
  "createdAt": "2026-08-06T05:00:59.646Z",
  "createdByUserId": "12VApsG4ia3ZbDZXll_un"
}