The BEST episodes of Wagon Train season 1
Every episode of Wagon Train season 1, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best episodes of Wagon Train season 1!
Wagon Train followed the trials and tribulations of pioneering families as they set out from the East to carve out a new life in the West soon after the American Civil War. For some of the travelers it was a happy ending, but not for all, which only heightened the drama along the way.
#1 - The Julie Gage Story
Season 1 - Episode 14 - Aired 12/18/1957
Julia Gage is travelling west with her father. Early on in the trip it is obvious that she is an independent woman, who, although single, won't become any man's doormat. Along the way her father dies of fever and she is left to continue the journey alone. The Major is worried about her being able to cope and sends along a succession of likely men to help her but she proves stronger than any of them, in spirit if not physically. When one of them, Tobe Cannon, takes ill with a fever, Julia, alone of all the women on the train who fear for their own safety, offers to nurse him. As it wouldn't be right and proper for a single woman to be alone with a single man, she persuades the Major to ""half"" marry them, as her patient is in no fit state to object to the union. Luckily, when he recovers, he doesn't object at all!
#2 - The Gabe Carswell Story
Season 1 - Episode 18 - Aired 1/15/1958
Gabe Carswell is a legendary scout who chooses to live with the Arapaho indians for over twenty years. During that time he marries an Arapaho squaw. They have one son. Sadly, Carswell's wife dies when her son is still a baby and Carswell is left to bring up his son alone within the tribe. As the years go by Carswell realises that the Indian way of life is waning as the white settlers progress westard and force the buffalo from the indian lands. So, just before his son comes of age, Carswell takes him away from the tribe. Flint comes across their camp just in front of the wagon train. While Carswell's son, Little Elk, is examing Flint's new repeating rifle, Carswell explains to Flint his fears for his son. What neither of them realise is the lengths Little Elk will go to not to give up his indian way of life and to prove he is more indian than any indian.
#3 - The Zeke Thomas Story
Season 1 - Episode 11 - Aired 11/27/1957
Flint is out scouting with another member of the train, Zeke Thomas. They are looking for a watering place that the train used the previous year. What they find is that where a bare watering hole once was, now stood a town. They ride on in. Outside the saloon, they are met with an unwelcoming committee of townsfolk intent on making the wagon train pay for the use of the water. Flint goes on in to the saloon to try to reason with the town's Mayor, leaving Zeke to mind the horses. While Flint is talking to the Mayor, the Mayor's mistress is looking out of the saloon's window. She sees Zeke Thomas and leaves the saloon to talk to him. Flint tries hard but can't change the Mayor's mind so eventually he and Zeke return to the train. It looks as if there will be a confrontation - between the travellers and the townsfolk; between Zeke, his wife and the mistress. In coming across the town both the wagon train and Zeke Thomas find more trouble than they bargained for.
#4 - The Jesse Cowan Story
Season 1 - Episode 17 - Aired 1/8/1958
Two brothers return to their home after the civil war to find their home and family wiped out. Their family, the Cowans, had long been feuding with a neighbouring family, the Beals, and so the Beal family are the prime suspects. The elder Beal son, Ruf, especially so. The Beals are nowhere to be found. The Cowan brothers discover that the Beals have joined up with a wagon train, heading west to start a new life. The Beals have joined Seth Adams train and when the Cowans catch up with it, Major Adams finds the wagon train becomes their new feuding ground.
#5 - The Riley Gratton Story
Season 1 - Episode 12 - Aired 12/4/1957
The train is halted. Flint McCullough is away, scouting. Then in rides a rangy young man with the gift of the gab who fought alongside the Major during the war. The Major takes a shine to him and invites him to stay, which suits this young man with the name of Riley Gratton just fine. It takes the wiley old Wooster to remind the Major that, when they were in the army, Gratton went missing shortly after the Major's prized golden spurs did. It seems Gratton has done the same again, only this time he disappears after selling some worthless land to the settlers. The Major decides to go after him to get it all back by hook or by crook.
#6 - The Luke O'Malley Story
Season 1 - Episode 16 - Aired 1/1/1958
Flint is in town at a saloon. He is standing by the bar when a man seated at a nearby table with a deck of cards in his hand, asks Flint if he wants to play a hand. Flint declines. The bartender remarks that he thought the gambler would be at the hanging. The man, O'Malley, doesn't wish to see his old friend hang, especially as Ramero blames him for his capture. Flint is told that Ramero, a notorious Mexican bandit leader, is to be hanged there that day. Later that day, a parson with his two small children, a girl and a boy, turn up at the wagon train. He claims to have been robbed by Ramero, who even took his bible. The Major allows them to join the train, although Flint thinks the man is too similar in looks to the gambler he met. The Major's suspicions are only aroused when the ""parson"" gives an unlikely off the cuff sermon, and his daughter gives Wooster a lesson in cardplay. When word is received that Ramero has escaped the noose and is on the run again Flint goes off to see if h
#7 - The Bill Tawnee Story
Season 1 - Episode 22 - Aired 2/12/1958
The Major finds a lone wagon on the trail. Inside is a man he recognises as Bill Tawnee, once Indian Scout to General Sherman during the Civil War and much decorated for bravery. With him is his wife and baby. Bill is suffering from a beating he took at a trading post back on the trail. The Major takes them back to the wagons to resume their journey with them. On the train is another civil war hero, Mr. Barry. That is his version of events at least. It is not long before a few comments from Bill Tawnee show that Barry did not win the civil war single handed and the two men come to blows. Later, Bill Tawnee finds Barry's missing rifle. When Barry accuses Bill of stealing it, Bill decides to leave the train, leaving his wife and child behind. It seems there is no hope of him returning. Then events take a turn for the worse and Bill Tawney comes into his own.
#8 - The Annie MacGregor Story
Season 1 - Episode 21 - Aired 2/5/1958
The Clan MacGregor are moving west, complete with bagpipes, kilts and a stubborn streak not to give up their old way of life. The friction this causes with the rest of the train results in the the MacGregors going their separate way, which is hard on Annie, who has fallen in love with a young American man on the train, Jason. The main train forges on ahead, leaving the MacGregors to their fate. However, marauding Indians attack the wagon train and things are looking grim. Then the MacGregors arrive over the horizon, blowing their pipes for all they are worth. The Indians fear the Devil is in the sound and break off the attack. The MacGregors have saved the day!
#9 - The Nels Stack Story
Season 1 - Episode 6 - Aired 10/23/1957
Like the Major, Nelson Stack is an ex-army office from the Confederate army. Since the war, though, he has become a pacifist. That, together with the fact that he has more wagons and stock than most on the train, hasn't endeared him to many of his fellow travellers, especially a southerner named Jeff Claymore. When the wagon train runs into Indian trouble, Claymore believes Stack's pacifism is just another word for cowardice. Things really come to a head when it is discovered that Indians have raided the stock and taken some steers. They find one of the Indians, an old man left to die, but Stack won't leave him behind. So he takes him with them. It is the last straw for Claymore.
#10 - The Sacramento Story
Season 1 - Episode 39 - Aired 6/25/1958
At the end of a long journey, lives were lost. Some made it with their dreams intact. Flint tries to help one of the passengers with theirs and almost bites off too much. Politics are involved as well as unsolicited trips to the Far East.
#11 - The Mark Hanford Story
Season 1 - Episode 23 - Aired 2/26/1958
Flint finds himself in the middle of a family feud that threatens to spill over into a full scale Indian blood war. The trouble starts when Mark Hanford returns home to his father's ranch after receiving a priviledged education in the East. He finds his real mother dead and his father about to take a younger bride who is coming out on Seth Adams' wagon train. When Mark discovers this, he realises exactly what has happened to his mother, sister of the local Indian Chief. It is his father who pushed his mother back to her tribe in favour of the younger woman. Mark Hanford believes the shame his mother felt at having to return to the tribe broke her spirit and led to her death. Mark decides to take on his Indian heritage and disown his father and all he stands for and in so doing take revenge on his father for the death of his mother.
#12 - The Ruth Owens Story
Season 1 - Episode 4 - Aired 10/9/1957
Ruth Owens, her little girl and her second husband are journeying west with the train. Her husband is a teacher and they seem like any other average couple on the train.The weather has turned hot and the train has hit a dry patch. Water is rationed. Tempers are on a knife edge. One particularly hot night a young stranger rides into camp. He has had word that his older sister is on the train and he has come looking for her to tell her that their father is dead. The first family he comes across asks him about her. He explains that she was a waitress in a smart hotel. When one of the men hears the name of the ""hotel"" he laughs in the boy's face; the place is infamous for one type of woman in particular. Upset by the insinuation about his sister the boy lashes out and the man ends up dead. The men on the train form a lynching party but Major Adams intervenes. When Ruth Owens sees the boy she recognises him as her brother, but to step forward and defend him would mean losing her new found r
#13 - The Major Adams Story (1)
Season 1 - Episode 30 - Aired 4/23/1958
The first part of Major Adams own story begins just before the outbreak of the American Civil War and finishes at the war's end. By then the Major has met Charlie Wooster and Bill Hawkes, but there is some unfinished business with the girl he left behind him.
#14 - The Marie Dupree Story
Season 1 - Episode 25 - Aired 3/19/1958
Marie Dupree finds there is a high price to pay when she plays one man off against the other to win her affections.
#15 - The Bernal Sierra Story
Season 1 - Episode 24 - Aired 3/12/1958
There is trouble in store when the Major accepts Bernal Sierra onto the train fresh from the wars in Mexico. He is on a mission to find a cache of stolen gold and it isn't long before he has some suspects on the train well within his sights.
#16 - The Cliff Grundy Story
Season 1 - Episode 15 - Aired 12/25/1957
When a rifle shot sounds ahead of the train Flint McCullough rides out to investigate. He expects to find trouble - and so he does, of a sort. He finds an old friend from his civil war days, Cliff Grundy. Now there isn't a lot that Cliff Grundy hasn't done in his lifetime and for everything he has done he has a story or several to tell about it. Over the campfire that night he weaves his tales of derring doos and don'ts and many of the travellers believe him. Especially about the goldmine he is on his way to lay claim to. The next day Major Adams sends out Flint and a party of men to hunt buffalo to bolster their meat rations. Cliff goes along and by his side rides a teenager who hangs on his every word. Flint splits the party up and the boy and Cliff go off together. When they spot the buffalo, Cliff lets the boy take first shot but the shot goes wide and the now frightened buffalo stampede towards them. Cliff saves the boy but is trampled himself. When the men get him back to camp h
#17 - The Emily Rossiter Story
Season 1 - Episode 7 - Aired 10/30/1957
It is still early days on the wagon train trail. So when one morning the body of one of the men is discovered and money and a land deed stolen, and the evidence points to Indians, Flint won't believe it. He can't convince the travellers, though, that they are unlikely to run into Indian trouble this soon into their journey and that Indians would have no need of the items stolen. The travellers point to a tomahawk left behind by the raiders. Given the conflicting evidence, Major Adams asks Flint to stay behind and see what he can find out. As the train moves out, Flint follows the clues which lead him back to a small settlement the wagon train passed through a few days earlier. A chance encounter with a teenage girl and her overbearing stepfather make him suspect that there is more to this little outpost than first appears.
#18 - The Clara Beauchamp Story
Season 1 - Episode 13 - Aired 12/11/1957
A small group of cavalry men are on their way to their new post at a remote fort. At a small distance from the fort they tangle with two Indian Braves out hunting, unaware that their new commanding officer has worked out an agreement with the Chief of the local tribe about hunting rights around the fort and reservation. Not knowing that the Braves were not breaking any rules the troops give chase and shoot one brave dead. The Wagon Train becomes the target for the Chief's anger and he threatens to attack it. Helped by Flint, the Colonel tries to broker an agreement with the Chief and the deal is nearly closed when the Colonel's alchoholic wife appears on the scene. Conflict seems inevitable when she insults the Chief and the deal is off.
#19 - The Dan Hogan Story
Season 1 - Episode 33 - Aired 5/14/1958
The wagon train is stopping off at a small town called ""Sweet Sabbath"". Sweet by name, but not by nature, the name belies it's true, tough, character. Here the Major comes across an old friend, ex- New York cop and sometime prize fighter, Dan Hogan. Unwillingly, Dan finds himself up against the local villain who is fast with his gun. Dan has never carried or used a gun in his life, not even when he was a cop. He has a choice. He can run, or he can stand and fight - with his fists.
#20 - The Sarah Drummond Story
Season 1 - Episode 27 - Aired 4/2/1958
When Flint takes shelter from a storm, he finds a husband and wife being torn apart by hatred and intolerance. To repay their kindnes to him, he takes it upon himself to bring them back together again.
#21 - The Ruttledge Munroe Story
Season 1 - Episode 34 - Aired 5/21/1958
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.
#22 - The Mary Halstead Story
Season 1 - Episode 10 - Aired 11/20/1957
Mary Halstead is an elderly woman stricken with a terminal illness and a guilty conscience. She cannot do anything about the illness but she believes she can salve her conscience if she can find the son she abandoned as a child. She has journeyed west with the train because she has received word from a lawyer in a town on the trail purporting to know the whereabouts of her son. When Major Adams finds a young man left for dead in the brush, he takes him in despite the rope burns around the boy's neck which causes alarm amongst the travellers. They think someone has tried to hang him and jump to the conclusion that he is a criminal. The young man so reminds her of her son that Mrs. Halstead begs to look after him until he is well. He seems nice enough, but he still has to explain those rope burns and why it appears someone tried to hang him. In his story lies the truth about Mrs. Halstead's son.
#23 - The John Wilbot Story
Season 1 - Episode 37 - Aired 6/11/1958
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.
#24 - The Honorable Don Charlie Story
Season 1 - Episode 19 - Aired 1/22/1958
Major Adams is intrusted with getting socialite Julie Wharton safely to San Francisco. His plans nearly come to naught, however, when ageing Lothario the Honourable Don Charlie (at least that is one of the names he uses) tries to sweet talk her into staying with him. Hot on his heels, though, is his girlfriend and a soldier. The girlfriend wants to win him; the soldier wants to win back the money he and his colleagues believe Don Charlie cheated them out of.
#25 - The Charles Maury Story
Season 1 - Episode 32 - Aired 5/7/1958
A young southern belle with romantic notions about a guerrilla band of Rebel soldiers led by Charles Maury, gets a hard lesson in reality when she leaves the wagon train to join up with them.