Authenticity was something that the creators of Gunsmoke strived for. A key locale in Dodge City for Marshall Dillon, Doc Adams, Chester, and Miss Kitty was the Long Branch Saloon – which actually existed for a brief time in the booming Wild West Town of Dodge City, Kansas between 1874 and 1885, before it burned down, never to be rebuilt.
In order to achieve their goal of imbuing Gunsmoke with as much audio realism as possible, Norman Macdonnell and John Meston wrote dialogue that was often slow and halting, more like people actually talked. To add even more realism, Gunsmoke’s sound effects were often multilayered with a subtlety that echoed with the deep vastness of the prairie frontier. Also, multi-layering sound backdrops were used against the dialogue of the characters. So when Marshall Dillon was speaking to Chester Proudfoot, listeners would hear extraneous background conversations, or playing kids shouting, along with neighing horses and barking dogs. These sounds, likely common in a busy western town like Dodge City, weren’t typically used in other Westerns of the day. The focus was on dialogue and primary sound effects and music, which left many shows sounding exactly like what they were, programs produced in a studio. Fully investing its listeners in the experience, Gunsmoke sounded like Dodge City in the 1880s. Listen to the Sparkling Audio Quality in Radio Archives restoration of Gunsmoke, Volume 13.
