Facts About the TV Show, "Death Valley Days"

It was a nice comnbination of westerns and history.

Ronald Reagan/Death Valley DaysPhoto byCreative Commons: Sabatu

I like western history. I’ve read a lot of books about the subject and enjoy offbeat, quirky stories from that setting. Death Valley Days was a good union of those elements. While I didn’t find the production elements of the series to be all that good, the series was entertaining, nonetheless.

I vaguely remember the show plugging by 20 Mule Team Borax. It was also an anthology series, with no set cast or characters. The show did have four narrators over its long run. So, after some extra reading, here are some things you didn’t know about Death Valley Days.

1: The show was first hosted by Stanley Andrews, aka, “The Old Ranger.”

I’m not sure what type of Ranger he was. Texas? Arizona? Space?

2: Death Valley Days was the most successful television Western ever in the half-hour format.

There were 452 episodes in the series.

3: Many of the weapons in the series were not era appropriate.

So, the pioneers didn’t have machine guns?

4: The series was Ronald Reagan’s last acting job.

Reagan left the series to run for the office of Governor of California. Unless you count his political career. Just kidding. Though acting is a pretty good skill for politicians.

5: After Reagan’s departure, Rosemary DeCamp hosted show.

DeCamp played the mother to some notable TV characters including Marlo Thomas’ in That Girl, Buck Rogers, and Shirley Partridge. Sounds like she was a mother for the ages.

6: DeCamp and her husband had a rude awakening on July 7, 1946, when a wing from the experimental XF-11 piloted by Howard Hughes landed in her and her husband’s bedroom while they were sleeping.

At least I assume they were awakened. Either that or they are really sound sleepers.

7: Denver Pyle appeared in 10 episodes of the series.

I guess the show’s producers really liked to Pyle it on. Okay, sorry about that.

8: The series wrapped up in 1970 but continued on in re-runs with Merle Haggard providing some updated narration.

Of course, by that time the series was old and Haggard. Okay, that’s the last one.

9: Robert Taylor and Dale Robertson both spent time narrating the series.

Both also did some acting in the series in addition to narrating, and both died of lung cancer. In addition, Merle Haggard also had lung cancer. So, did hosting Death Valley Days cause lung cancer? Well, maybe the fac t they all smoked had something to do with it.

10:” Twenty-mule team “is actually a misnomer.

In reality, those teams had eighteen mules and two horses. I’m not sure why the horses weren’t mentioned. Maybe they had poor representation.