Series

Wagon Train

1957 · 8 seasons · 284 episodes · Ended · NBC

Western, Drama, Family

TMDB 6.6 · 31 votes

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The series initially starred veteran movie supporting actor Ward Bond as the wagon master, later replaced upon his death by John McIntire, and Robert Horton as the scout, subsequently replaced by lookalike Robert Fuller a year after Horton had decided to leave the series. The series was inspired by the 1950 film Wagon Master directed by John Ford and starring Ben Johnson, Harry Carey Jr. and Ward Bond, and harkens back to the early widescreen wagon train epic The Big Trail starring John Wayne and featuring Bond in his first major screen appearance playing a supporting role. Horton's buckskin outfit as the scout in the first season of the television series resembles Wayne's, who also played the wagon train's scout in the earlier film.

Episodes

  • S01E01The Willy Moran Story1957-09-1851m

    Willy Moran, a drunk, is hired by a wagon as a driver. He is an army buddy of the Major, but is used as a fall guy by a member of the train who wants to rob it. When the battle starts, Willy uses his army skills to turn the battle.

  • S01E02The Jean LeBec Story1957-09-2551m

    The train cannot get supplies after a member kills the son of the man who owns most of St. Joseph in self-defense. He escapes with the help of Flint but when he learns the train is still being denied supplies he returns to face hanging.

  • S01E03The John Cameron Story1957-10-0251m

    John Cameron, from Philadelphia, heads west with his wife to start a new life. Her flirtatious ways may get the better of her when three trappers come into camp offering fresh buffalo and thinking she might be more available than she is.

  • S01E04The Ruth Owens Story1957-10-0951m

    Ruth Owens remarries and is moving west with her new husband. When her brother comes looking for her, he stirs up trouble for her about her past and himself because he just killed a man.

  • S01E05The Les Rand Story1957-10-1651m

    Les Rand, just released from prison for murder, goes back home to kill the man he held responsible; his father, the doctor. Meanwhile, Flint is there to fetch the doctor to help someone injured. Les vows that no one will stand in his way.

  • S01E06The Nels Stack Story1957-10-2350m

    A pacifist since the war, Nels Stack stands up to any man prejudiced against another. When his own beliefs are tested in the face of an impending Indian attack against the wagon train, he has to decide who he is going to defend.

  • S01E07The Emily Rossiter Story1957-10-3050m

    Emily Rossiter had a young daughter to care for. She met and married someone she felt she could trust. When she found out this was misplaced, getting the daughter away from him and into a better life becomes her main goal.

  • S01E08The John Darro Story1957-11-0650m

    When the train picks up an abandoned drunk on the trail, he exposes John Darro to be the reviled coward John Thurman who abandoned a previous train during a massacre. Darro's young son Tommy is unable to cope with the truth.

  • S01E09The Charles Avery Story1957-11-1350m

    Lieutenant Avery has a mission. Deliver a peace treaty and the chief's daughter. But he has a secret vendetta that may jeopardize everyone's hope for peace.

  • S01E10The Mary Halstead Story1957-11-2050m

    Mary Halstead is in search of a son she gave up a long time ago. With months to live, she comes west on the trail of someone who could be her son, but he may also turn out to be a notorious outlaw.

  • S01E11The Zeke Thomas Story1957-11-2750m

    The wagon train stops in a newly built town to get water they had always been able to get before for free. Wanting money now, and at a steep price, has the Major upset. Sending Flint also uncovers a wife of a passenger thought dead.

  • S01E12The Riley Gratton Story1957-12-0451m

    Riley Gratton has always drifted from here to there, a smooth tongue getting him whatever he needed. When he tries to do the same with some folks on the Major's wagon train, what comes next may be the least of his worries.

  • S01E13The Clara Beauchamp Story1957-12-1150m

    When a new officer and troops kill an Indian brave and the post commander's drunken bored wife insults the Chief, Flint is forced to act as a neutral agent between the Army and Indians and save the wagon train.

  • S01E14The Julie Gage Story1957-12-1850m

    A head strong Julie Gage is determined to ride her wagon to California. Losing her pa to fever, many suitors step up to help but she'll have none of it until one comes down with fever himself and she's the only one who will tend to him.

  • S01E15The Cliff Grundy Story1957-12-2550m

    Mortally wounded in a buffalo stampede, Cliff Grundy's friend Flint stays when the wagon train leaves. Manson says he will help but his reasons for staying become clear as Cliff keeps saying he has a goldmine somewhere and he's recovering.

  • S01E16The Luke O'Malley Story1958-01-0150m

    Luke O'Malley is running from an outlaw who said he would kill him for turning him into the law. Since he won't believe he didn't do it, he takes his two kids and joins Adams' wagon train disguised as a parsons, who doesn't act like one.

  • S01E17The Jesse Cowan Story1958-01-0850m

    The Cowans and Beals have been feuding a long time. Bob and Jesse return from the war and find their family dead and the Beals have joined a wagon train. Revenging their family is just the start of what Major Adams must now deal with.

  • S01E18The Gabe Carswell Story1958-01-1550m

    Gabe Carswell wants his son to join the whites because of what he sees coming for the Indians. When his son refuses he takes him to the wagon train heading for California but the Arapaho are getting set to attack.

  • S01E19The Honorable Don Charlie Story1958-01-2250m

    Don Charlie is a gambler and womanizer and makes no excuses for it. When he meets a woman who wants to marry him there may be trouble because the Major promised her uncle that she would make it safely to San Francisco.

  • S01E20The Dora Gray Story1958-01-2950m

    Dora Gray has made some poor choices in her life. Just wanting to get to San Francisco, her latest one involves someone who sells army guns to the Indians and Flint finds himself right in the middle of it.

  • S01E21The Annie MacGregor Story1958-02-0549m

    The MacGregor clan decides to come to America and start a new life. The wagon trains going to California have had a hard time dealing with their different customs. Can Major Adams' be any different?

  • S01E22The Bill Tawnee Story1958-02-1250m

    Bill Tawnee served his country heroically. When Major Adams recognizes him on the trail and sees he is unable to wake, he asks his wife to join his wagon train even though there is plenty of anti-Indian sentiment afloat.

  • S01E23The Mark Hanford Story1958-02-2650m

    Jack Hanford built his wealth to give his son. He turns it all down to honor his Cheyenne heritage when his mother dies. To make matters worse in his son's eyes, he had sent for a woman he briefly met to replace her even before she died.

  • S01E24The Bernal Sierra Story1958-03-1250m

    Revolutionary Bernal Sierra joins the train finding the wife of his dead friend married to Casey Reardon who sold guns to the Mexican revolutionaries. Bernal is suspicious of Casey, his brothers, and Perdita over missing gold.

  • S01E25The Marie Dupree Story1958-03-1950m

    A beautiful woman riding with the train likes flirting. When she gets mixed up with the wrong man, she strings along a boy on the train in order to make him jealous, playing one man's love against another's.

  • S01E26A Man Called Horse1958-03-2650m

    Horse, a name he comes to be called, is searching for himself. Since he doesn't feel that he found it in Boston, where he grew up, he tries out west, under the watchful eye of a small tribe of Crow.

  • S01E27The Sarah Drummond Story1958-04-0250m

    During a storm, Flint takes shelter at a farmhouse. He soon discovers the husband is refusing his wife the care of a midwife and before it's too late for her he needs to find out why.

  • S01E28The Sally Potter Story1958-04-0950m

    Sally Potter hitches a ride on the wagon train but being pretty helps and hurts her. Someone she knew catches up to the train and wants to remind her of who she is and where she came from, possibly ruining what she wants for her future.

  • S01E29The Daniel Barrister Story1958-04-1650m

    Faith is tested when a man's wife is injured and he refuses medical aid. When Flint rides to the nearest town to get a doctor, he finds they have their own problems: a smallpox epidemic.

  • S01E30The Major Adams Story (1)1958-04-2350m

    During the Civil War Charlie Wooster joins Bill Hawks under the command of Major Seth Adams. When Adams is seriously wounded saving Hawks's life he must struggle to survive, while dreaming of the girl he left behind.

  • S01E31The Major Adams Story (2)1958-04-3049m

    Years after the Civil War, Major Adams gets a second chance with his lost love Ranie, who had married in his absence. But happiness doesn't always come easy, as a sinister rival and a dark secret attest.

  • S01E32The Charles Maury Story1958-05-0750m

    Disguised as Yank soldiers, a band of confederate marauders blend into the wagon train, planning on robbing everyone. They are at first stopped but a member of the train helps the man in charge when she discovers the truth to his identity.

  • S01E33The Dan Hogan Story1958-05-1450m

    In a growing town, Seth meets a friend from his distant past. He remembers how they met and the circumstances bringing them west. When his friend's home is threatened, not ever wearing a gun surprisingly helps him rather than the reverse.

  • S01E34The Ruttledge Munroe Story1958-05-2150m

    Ruttledge Munroe joins the wagon train on the trail. It's noticed right off his odd sense of humor but when he saves the major's life, it is forgotten until he kills someone else and the real reason he joined up is revealed.

  • S01E35The Rex Montana Story1958-05-2850m

    On one final push to the west, a wild west showman runs into some old friends. Some that were part of a massacre that almost cost them their lives and one man his sanity.

  • S01E36The Cassie Tanner Story1958-06-0450m

    Trail hardened Cassie Tanner joins the train, and sets her eye on Major Adams. But the train desperately needs horses, and she may be the only one who can make the dangerous journey to buy them.

  • S01E37The John Wilbot Story1958-06-1149m

    Tensions are running high in the train between northerners and southerners traveling west. As trouble escalates one passenger with a noticeable limp, John Wilbot, is accused of being John Wilkes Booth, who many believe is still alive.

  • S01E38The Monty Britton Story1958-06-1850m

    Low on water, Flint scouts for more. When three water holes are dry or poisoned, Fort Paiute seems their only hope but he has to make it back to the wagon train on foot and the only other man who knows the way is believed to be a deserter.

  • S01E39The Sacramento Story1958-06-2549m

    At the end of a long journey, lives were lost. Some made it with their dreams intact. Flint tries to help two of the passengers with theirs and almost bites off too much. Politics are involved as well as unsolicited trips to the Far East.

Cast