About this season
The Oregon Trail is a 14-episode NBC western television series starring Rod Taylor as the widower Evan Thorpe, who leaves his Illinois farm in 1842 to take the Oregon Trail to the Pacific Northwest. The show also starred Andrew Stevens, Tony Becker, and Gina Marie Smika as Thorpe's children. Darleen Carr starred as Margaret Devlin, one of the passengers on the wagon train, and Charles Napier portrayed Luther Sprague, a frontier scout recruited by Thorpe. The series was filmed in the Flagstaff, Arizona area.
Episodes (13)
1. Hard Ride Home
Aired 21 September 1977 • 60 min
We meet the Wagon train . They are heading to the west coast to start a better life for themselves. Character and plot descriptions revealed.
2. The Last Game
Aired 21 September 1977 • 60 min
We meet the Wagon train . They are heading to the west coast to start a better life for themselves. Character and plot descriptions revealed. This one picked up where last week's left off.
3. The Waterhole
Aired 28 September 1977 • 60 min
After hours in the desert, the Wagon Train comes upon a watering hole in the desert. After everyone drinks the water, they fall ill. IT takes some smart thinking to figure out what caused the sickness - and to save the people on the Wagon Train.
4. Trapper's Rendezvous
Aired 12 October 1977 • 60 min
5. The Army Deserter
Aired 19 October 1977 • 60 min
6. Hannah's Girls
Aired 26 October 1977 • 60 min
Hannah Morgan (Stella Stevens) is the leader of a group of mail-order brides (who actually are a group of ""showgirls"") who join the wagon train. Romance percolates, but mutual respect arises instead as Hannah helps nurse Evan's daughter back from a bout of cholera.
7. Return From Death
Aired 2 November 1977 • 60 min
Evan Thorpe serves as defense attorney for a mysterious man suspected of killing a member of the wagon train. Frontier justice was never so just.
8. The Scarlet Ribbon
Aired 9 November 1977 • 60 min
A bullet-ridden wagon reveals that gun-runners are supplying rifles to the Redskins and Evan is detemined to run them to earth whatever the risk.
9. The Gold Dust Queen
Aired 16 November 1977 • 60 min
10. The Return of the Baby
Aired 23 November 1977 • 60 min
An Indian woman gives birth to a baby after her village is destroyed.
11. Evan's Vendetta
Aired 30 November 1977 • 60 min
12. Suffer the Little Children
Aired 7 December 1977 • 60 min
13. Wagon Race
Aired 14 December 1977 • 60 min