For eight seasons, audiences could tune their TVs to Wagon Train each week and follow a new story as Ward Bond’s Major Seth Adams and Robert Horton’s Flint McCullough led their group across the American West on a journey from Missouri to California.
The faces and places of the show, which aired its final episode 60 years ago, on May 2, 1965, changed over the years: John McIntire took over after Bond’s 1960 death, Robert Fuller filled in after Horton’s 1962 departure, the show switched from NBC to ABC for Season 6, and color episodes came and went. But the Western series’ appeal endured, especially with big-name guest stars like Ernest Borgnine, Bette Davis, Jane Wyman, and Ronald Reagan lassoing viewers.