The Oregon Trail

- Season 1

(1977)

A Midwestern family decides to pack up their belongings and head west to Oregon, where they hear land is free for the taking.

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Despite the wagon train's rules against gambling Charles Shrigley is running a crooked poker game and cleaning out the settlers. Margaret and her father have plans to fleece Shrigley, but they conflict with Evan's plan to prove Shrigley is cheating so he can throw him off the train.

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The wagon train runs into a band of trappers led by Lemus (Claude Akins) who befriends Rachel. The trappers want to hang a member of the train they believe guilty of a crime. Evan has to fight Lemus with the winner to determine if there is a hanging. Rachel is torn between her father and her friend.

A cavalry soldier who is sickened by his involvement in Indian killings. He deserts but then decides to take Andy hostage to evade capture by troops sent to bring him back.

Hannah's girls are a band of saloon girls forced to drop out of their wagon train when one came down with cholera (and recovered). When Evan finds them, they tell him they are mail order brides and he invites them to join their train.

Jarvis is killed and Evan has to convene a trial to determine if Hubbard is guilty as everyone believes. Jarvis had been courting Hubbard's former wife. No one had a bad word to say against Jarvis until the trial begins and Evan discovers he wasn't the man he appeared to be.

The Thorpe family are drawn into an army effort to uncover gun running to the Indians. Conflict arises between a martinet Sgt Cole and a more experienced army scout Sprague.

Amelia McKay is a wealthy widow who hires some of the wagon train folk as staff/servants to make her life easier on the trail. Amelia sets her romantic sights on Evan which does not please Margaret. Margaret decides to "help" Amelia by hiring on to her staff.

Indian captive Mary Anne Morehead (Kim Darby) has escaped. Mary Anne is hugely pregnant and asks the wagon train for help to get back to her home and husband, which she says she has missed during the six months of her captivity. Luther doesn't believe everything is as it seems and suggests Evan go with Andrew who is escorting Mary Anne home.

While riding, Thorpe and Andy are taken prisoner by a gang of men and women fleeing to Mexico after knocking off a train. Under the assumption Andy has been shot dead, Thorpe leads the tense gang to a source of water or so it seems.

A young girl, Jenny, has an accident and her father (Robert Fuller) insists she doesn't need a doctor - just faith in God. Jenny wants the doctor pointing out that's what her father said before her mother died. Evan sends to a nearby mining town for a doctor who can't leave because a cave-in has injured the miners. He sends his young son with a medical book. The boy has assisted his father with the procedure needed, but Evan still has to get Jenny's father to agree.

A woman on the wagon train faces the wrath of her fellow passengers after she strikes a friendship with Thorpe. The members of another train sabotages the Thorpe party's outfit to slow them down and prevent them from getting trading post.