The WORST episodes of Wagon Train
Every episode of Wagon Train ever, ranked from worst to best by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The worst episodes of Wagon Train!
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 Betsy Blee Smith Story
Season 8 - Episode 22 - Aired 3/28/1965
Despite the advice of some Coop decides to visit former girlfriend Eloise Blee, but finds Eloise gone, and instead winds up being talked into posing as her twin sister Betsy's missing husband and father of her baby daughter.
#2 - Herman
Season 8 - Episode 18 - Aired 2/14/1965
The wagon train comes across old Jamison Hershey and Herman, his 3000 pound Belgian horse. The old man has made it safely through hostile Indian territory because the tribes are so in awe of his horse. Hershey and Herman are invited to ride with the train, though it becomes apparent that Herman is not able to travel very fast and may hold back the entire group.
#3 - The Hector Heatherton Story
Season 8 - Episode 13 - Aired 12/20/1964
Charlie has finally found someone else who shares his dream of man being able to fly, henpecked inventor Hector Heatherton, who has been working on an idea for building a flying machine so Charlie volunteers to build a machine for Hector.
#4 - The Barbara Lindquist Story
Season 8 - Episode 5 - Aired 10/18/1964
Cooper Smith is on his way to the town of Washburn to pick up long awaited mail for the wagon train when he stumbles upon a stagecoach robbery in progress. The very proper Miss Barbara Lindquist is on her way to meet her fiancé, mistakes Coop for one of the robbers and ends up forcing him to help her. Further misadventures see Coop wounded and both he and Barbara struggling to get to back to the wagon train for help. Believing his wound will end his days as a scout, Coop finds himself falling in love with Barbara and she with him. But will their love stand the test ...
#5 - The Race Town Story
Season 8 - Episode 4 - Aired 10/11/1964
Bill accompanies Barnaby to Sam Race's tent city of "entertainers", where a girl from the train that Barnaby likes has taken a job, not as a singer, as she had thought, but as a saloon girl. Bill hopes to keep Barnaby out of trouble with the gambling and con games Race runs, but trouble and humiliation is just what they both find.
#6 - The Whipping
Season 7 - Episode 27 - Aired 3/23/1964
With Chris gone Bill is in charge of the train when Barnaby goes overboard in his pranks. After messing with a wagon wheel, Bill orders him to fix it by himself causing Barnaby to break his leg causing a major rift between them.
#7 - The Ben Engel Story
Season 7 - Episode 26 - Aired 3/16/1964
Wealthy Engel has used psychopathic Harry Diel as a proxy during the Civil War to save Diel from jail but Diel plots on the train as Engel's employee to usurp Engel's business by making himself appear a cuckold to Engel among other wiles.
#8 - The Jeff Hartfield Story
Season 5 - Episode 20 - Aired 2/14/1962
Jeff Hartfield becomes concerned when his sister Jenny begins dating Dallas who threatens him with an orphanage at journey's end. Jeff takes off but Dallas follows with deadly intent, believing Jeff knows the location of $30,000.
#9 - The Mark Miner Story
Season 5 - Episode 8 - Aired 11/15/1961
Mark Miner and his younger brother Matthew join the wagon train after making it appear their own wagon has broken down. The passengers of the train enjoy Mark's guitar and singing, but soon items and money begin disappearing. What they don't realize is that the two brothers want to frame Duke Shannon for the thievery, because they blame him for the imprisonment of their father and want revenge for it.
#10 - The George B. Hanrahan Story
Season 5 - Episode 26 - Aired 3/28/1962
Ousted medicine man predicts future of wagon train passenger. Is it a hoax or real?
#11 - The Johnny Masters Story
Season 6 - Episode 18 - Aired 1/16/1963
On his way to Fort David, wagon scout Duke Shannon rescues Sgt. Johnny Masters being sent to prison for twenty years; a man caught between two worlds. The world of his ancestors the Cherokee, and the world of his loyalty, the U.S. Army.
#12 - The Countess Baranof Story
Season 3 - Episode 31 - Aired 5/11/1960
Countess Baranof is desperate to get to Alaska to claim her family fortune, and with no horses she applies her considerable charms on Flint. But she's not the one Flint should worry about, as her bodyguard has a more sinister agenda.
#13 - The Luke Grant Story
Season 3 - Episode 34 - Aired 6/1/1960
Luke Grant is found wandering the desert with one wish on his mind - kill me! Turned over to the wagon train by some friendly Chiracawa Indians, they slowly discover his identity and that there are Apaches on the war path and nearby.
#14 - The Lizabeth Ann Calhoun Story
Season 5 - Episode 10 - Aired 12/6/1961
Lizabeth Ann Calhoun meets the wagon train staff as they stop for supplies. She asks permission to join the train so she can avoid the advances of a young man she claims is in love with her, however his real motives may be very different.
#15 - The Dr. Denker Story
Season 5 - Episode 18 - Aired 1/31/1962
Bill spots a young boy alone on the trail. He passes out but they later learn he can't talk but that he saw his dad killed by strangers for no apparent reason. Later, they run into Dr. Denker taking musical instruments to California.
#16 - The Shiloh Degnan Story
Season 6 - Episode 8 - Aired 11/7/1962
An officer Chris knows is found near the wagon train near death. He tells Chris that a passage in the bible describes him and his commander - Shioh Degnan. Chris returns him to Fort Bannerman to the Army where the truth is revealed.
#17 - The Lily Legend Story
Season 6 - Episode 21 - Aired 2/13/1963
While riding through the desert plains, Duke and Charlie come across a sheriff as he is about to die of a heart attack and his female prisoner, Lily Legend, a childhood sweetheart of Duke who the sheriff is taking to be hanged for murder.
#18 - The Adam MacKenzie Story
Season 6 - Episode 27 - Aired 3/27/1963
The Perez family is run out of town because people believe their daughter Juana is a witch. The family joins the wagon train, and after Juana's brother Felipe is mauled by a cat, the old world is pitted against the new world of medicine.
#19 - The Tom O'Neal Story
Season 6 - Episode 31 - Aired 4/24/1963
Tom O'Neal and Ellen Howard want to get married, but their parents object, so Tom takes money from his father's savings and runs away with Ellen. They soon realize that that was an unwise decision.
#20 - The Clarence Mullins Story
Season 6 - Episode 32 - Aired 5/1/1963
Duke and Charlie leave the train for supplies and to see Duke's old friends at a fort. One is a minister who was cashiered out of the Army who is trying to create peace with the Modocs despite a Major who only wants to kill all Indians.
#21 - The Indian Girl Story
Season 8 - Episode 24 - Aired 4/18/1965
A white renegade rides into the wagon train camp with an Indian girl tied to a rope and forced to walk without food or water. He says that he is bringing her back to the tribe where she will be tortured and killed for killing the chief's son. Hawks, in charge of a smaller group until Hale and Coop meet them with the rest of the train, decides to forcibly take the girl from her sadistic captor and keep her with his group, even knowing that this may lead to an attack from the chief's tribe.
#22 - The Jarbo Pierce Story
Season 8 - Episode 26 - Aired 5/2/1965
The series' final episode begins and ends with the two characters who stayed with it from beginning to end, as Charlie tells Hawks about his earlier days working for trading post operator Jarbo Pierce. Jarbo, once a wild, hard-drinking man, had become a minister, though he could still take on any man who tried to fight him. When his younger brother Adam arrived at the post Jarbo found himself at odds with him as Adam preferred the wilder ways of life and didn't understand Jarbo's concerns for the Indians he traded with, and began working with a man who wanted to use ...
#23 - The Lonnie Fallon Story
Season 5 - Episode 19 - Aired 2/7/1962
Cowboy Lonnie Fallon is in love with Kathy Jennings---but her strict father forbids the relationship.
#24 - The Marie Brandt Story
Season 3 - Episode 16 - Aired 1/20/1960
Trying to give her son a chance, Maidie Brant is found by the wagon train. Needing fresh horses after a cougar attack, she is reluctant to say why she won't go back to town and buy some but would rather pay top dollar for the Major's.
#25 - Alias Bill Hawks
Season 6 - Episode 34 - Aired 5/15/1963
Bill Hawks receives a note asking him to help an Indian friend of his from the Civil War. He arrives to find the local town drilling a well on the man's property and eventually that the man has been hanged for attacking a local girl.