The Big Valley is an American Western television series that originally aired from September 15, 1965, to May 19, 1969 on ABC. The series is set on the fictional Barkley Ranch in Stockton, California, from 1884 to 1888. The one-hour episodes follow the lives of the Barkley family, one of the wealthiest and largest ranch-owning families in Stockton, led by matriarch Victoria Barkley, her sons Jarrod and Nick, daughter Audra, and their half-brother Heath. The series was created by A.I. Bezzerides and Louis F. Edelman, and produced by Levy-Gardner-Laven for Four Star Television.
Sierra Railway Engine #3 at the old Jamestown, California Depot, for the filming of the pilot episode of The Big Valley, 1965
The Big Valley main cast. Left to right: Long, Majors, Evans, Stanwyck, and Breck
L-R: Linda Evans, Barbara Stanwyck, Richard Long, Peter Breck, Lee Majors, and Charles Briles (1965)
Barbara Stanwyck, Michael Burns and Colleen Dewhurst in episode "A Day of Terror" (1966)
Television Westerns are programs with settings in the later half of the 19th century in the American Old West, Western Canada and Mexico during the period from about 1860 to the end of the so-called "Indian Wars". More recent entries in the Western genre have used the neo-Western subgenre, placing events in the modern day, or the space Western subgenre but still draw inspiration from the outlaw attitudes prevalent in traditional Western productions.
Gene Autry
1959 series leads Will Hutchins (Sugarfoot), Peter Brown (Lawman), Jack Kelly (Maverick), Ty Hardin (Bronco), James Garner (Maverick), Wayde Preston (Colt .45), and John Russell (Lawman)
Clint Eastwood in Rawhide
Stuart Whitman and Victoria Shaw in Cimarron Strip (1967)