I've watched a lot of Wagon Train episodes, but I've never seen one like this. The music was different and there was a kind of hush to the approach that it took to telling this story. A sense of reverence. Written by a talented woman (Jean Holloway), this episode focuses on several of the women who are about to cross the seemingly endless prairie. At the start, we're introduced to them when Flint walks from one wagon to the next, greeting them by name. We're told enough to know that this will be a difficult journey, and that not everyone will survive. Modern viewers who ridicule this episode because it only shows women falling apart are ignoring the fact that it also shows the hell that they had to endure -- the fear, the difficulty of leaving hometowns they've always loved behind, the hardships that real women once faced as well as the impact all of this had on their mental health. Some won't make it. Bad decisions will be made. But The Prairie Story also reminds us that there were once women in America's past who found enough strength and courage inside themselves to continue moving westward. Kudos to the show's producers for realizing that this was a story worth telling.