Death Valley Days

…drama appears to have been Death Valley Days, which first aired on September 30, 1930, over NBC’s Red network. The series came about when the Pacific Borax Company wanted to sponsor a dramatic show about the Old West (which fit in with the “20 Mule Team” trademark of its cleaning…

…lawman of that name, and Death Valley Days, which was set in the Far West. Television also took up westerns in its earlier years. Such long-lived series as Gunsmoke, Bonanza, The Big Valley, and a half-dozen others captured large viewing audiences in the late 1950s and the ’60s, after which…