The BEST Episodes of Gunsmoke
Every episode ever - ranked by fan votes!
Last Updated: Mar 11, 2020
Network: CBS
Marshal Matt Dillon keeps the peace in the rough and tumble Dodge City.
#1 - Minnie
Season 6 - Episode 30 - Aired Apr 15, 1961
Rough and rowdy Minnie comes to Dodge Cith and sets her designs on Doc Adams much to the delight of Matt, Chester and Kitty. Trouble comes though when Minnie's husband comes to Dodge and finds out that his Minnie is sweet on Doc.
9.18 
#2 - With a Smile
Season 8 - Episode 29 - Aired Mar 30, 1963
A rancher's spoiled son believes even after he is convicted of murder that his father's wealth and influence will save him from the hangman.
8.08 
#3 - Sins of the Father
Season 2 - Episode 17 - Aired Jan 19, 1957
A white man and his Indian wife, passing through Dodge, become targets of violence after it is learned that the wife's father led deadly raids against white settlers.
8.00 
#4 - Old Yellow Boots
Season 7 - Episode 2 - Aired Oct 7, 1961
Matt becomes suspicious when drifter Frank Cassidy publicly announces his engagement to spinsterish Beulah Parker immediately after the seemingly unrelated murders of an old prospector and her abusive brother Leroy.
8.00 
#5 - Chesterland
Season 7 - Episode 8 - Aired Nov 18, 1961
Chester becomes engaged more or less accidentally, but he takes to heart his obligation to his betrothed, leaving his job with Mr. Dillon to devote himself to homesteading a barren quarter section.
8.00 
#6 - Us Haggens
Season 8 - Episode 13 - Aired Dec 8, 1962
When a boy witnesses his grandfather's murder, it sends Matt looking for a new found companion's uncle. Festus Haggen is tracking his uncle for killing his twin brother Fergus. Matt is wary but learns to trust Festus when he's shot and in bad shape.
8.00 
#7 - Quint-Cident
Season 8 - Episode 33 - Aired Apr 27, 1963
A woman newly widowed is powerfully attracted to Quint, but when he gently turns her down, she vows to make him pay for scorning a white woman.
8.00 
#8 - Stolen Horses
Season 6 - Episode 29 - Aired Apr 8, 1961
Horse thieves murder a man to get his animals. Matt tracks the criminals to a Kiowa camp.
7.93 
#9 - Abe Blocker
Season 8 - Episode 11 - Aired Nov 24, 1962
Abe Blocker, an aging mountain man, tells Bud and Mary Groves to get off their homestead or die. Bud tells Matt. He goes looking. Abe shoots at Buck's hooves. Abe's wife and child died in childbirth. Matt tells Bud he talked to Abe to no avail. Joe tell Matt the Groves have been scalped. Matt finds big moccasin prints, and start trailing Abe. He sees him thrice but he disappears. Matt gives up and returns to Dodge. Quint says he's killed again, Jim Kelly and Pete Brice. Emmet's forming a posse. Gant says Joe Clark has been killed. Abe appears to the posse, and starts picking them off. Gant hits Abe. Matt tells Quint if he 's hit that bad no need to track him. Matt finds Abe in the cave near where his wife and child is buried. He dies trying to kill Matt.
7.93 
#10 - I Call Him Wonder
Season 8 - Episode 28 - Aired Mar 23, 1963
An orphaned Indian boy latches on to a cowboy in need of work and the two of them find all doors closed to them in Dodge.
7.93 
#11 - Tell Chester
Season 8 - Episode 32 - Aired Apr 20, 1963
Chester is smitten with Polly, but she has eyes only for Wade, a man new in town and newly her father's employee. Knowing little about Wade, Polly agrees quickly to marry him, but Chester discovers that Wade already has a wife.
7.93 
#12 - Perce
Season 7 - Episode 1 - Aired Sep 30, 1961
Ex-con Perce McCall helps to save Matt's life in a shootout, and then falls for a beautiful, but greedy saloon girl who puts him under great pressure to start stealing again.
7.93 
#13 - Amy's Good Deed
Season 3 - Episode 31 - Aired Apr 12, 1958
Amy Slater gets to Dodge and tells Matt she came to die. He suggests seeing Doc Adams, she says she's not sick but that Matt could help. When asked how, she says "you're going to kill me." Learning the truth, he decides how to handle it.
7.92 
#14 - Cows and Cribs
Season 3 - Episode 13 - Aired Dec 7, 1957
An impoverished but hardworking woman's plans to adopt an orphan baby are jeopardized when Matt discovers that her improvident husband is involved in cattle rustling.
7.89 
#15 - Laughing Gas
Season 3 - Episode 29 - Aired Mar 29, 1958
When town bully Cloud Marsh experiences public humiliation during a laughing gas show, he and his surly brothers assault proprietor Earle Stafford and attempt to molest his kind-hearted wife.
7.89 
#16 - Gone Straight
Season 2 - Episode 20 - Aired Feb 9, 1957
When Matt serves a warrant in another town for a wanted man, there are two men answering the possible suspect's description, and they both have gone totally straight.
7.89 
#17 - The Big Con
Season 3 - Episode 34 - Aired May 3, 1958
Mr Shaneways wants Mr Papp at the bank to loan him $20,000 for a poker bet. Doc gets kidnapped.
7.87 
#18 - Daddy-O
Season 2 - Episode 36 - Aired Jun 1, 1957
Kitty's long-lost father, who abandoned her when she was a baby, shows up in Dodge, eager to take her back to New Orleans with him.
7.87 
#19 - Bless Me Till I Die
Season 6 - Episode 31 - Aired Apr 22, 1961
Vengeful former convict Nate Bush sets off a tragic series of events when he informs Matt that well-liked new arrival Cole Treadwell is actually Cole Trankin, an escapee from the Arizona Territorial Prison.
7.87 
#20 - Anybody Can Kill a Marshal
Season 8 - Episode 26 - Aired Mar 8, 1963
Two men want to rob the bank in Dodge, but are unwilling to try it while Matt lives. A man agrees to accept the job of killing the marshal, attaching some rather peculiar conditions to his acceptance.
7.87 
#21 - Jesse
Season 3 - Episode 6 - Aired Oct 19, 1957
Young and likable Jesse Pruett teams up with an unlikely "partner" in the person of Bill Stapp, a murderous former Quantrill raider. Stapp has promised to lead Jesse to the man who killed his father so he can avenge his death, but the young man is tragically unaware of Stapp's true intentions
7.86 
#22 - Bloody Hands
Season 2 - Episode 21 - Aired Feb 16, 1957
The shooting of several members of an outlaw gang, though in self defense, triggers an emotional crisis in Matt, haunted by memories of all the men he has killed.
7.86 
#23 - Tall Trapper
Season 6 - Episode 19 - Aired Jan 21, 1961
A man and his wife come across a lone trapper and make camp with him. Next day, the husband comes to Dodge to report to Doc that his wife is sick, but Doc finds the woman beaten to death, and the husband accuses the trapper.
7.85 
#24 - Old Fool
Season 6 - Episode 15 - Aired Dec 24, 1960
A scheming woman (Else Hedgepath), who is after the money and wealth of Hannibal Bass, makes a play for Hannibal, but runs into some serious, SERIOUS trouble though when she tangles with *MRS* Bass!
7.85 
#25 - Never Pester Chester
Season 3 - Episode 10 - Aired Nov 16, 1957
Matt sets out with a vengeance to capture two trouble-making Texas cowhands who dragged Chester and left him near death.
7.85