How the Wild West Was Won with Ray Mears

Ray begins his westward journey in the Appalachian Mountains where he explores how their timbered slopes fuelled the lumber industry and provided the fuel and building material for the emerging nation. Further west, in the high jagged peaks of the Rocky Mountains, Ray goes mule trekking with mountain man Stu Sorenson, with whom he has close encounters with beaver, elk and black bear.

Ray joins the Blackfeet Indian Nation and learns how their ancestors were dependent upon the buffalo for their survival. He discovers the stories of the early homesteaders and in Dodge City, explores the story of the railways, cow-towns, the buffalo massacre and the life and myth of one of the Wild West's most iconic figures, the cowboy.

As Ray travels through the cold high mountain Great Basin desert and the hot Sonoran desert of Southern Arizona, he discovers how their hostile geography and rich geology shaped the stories of fortune hunting and lawlessness in the Wild West, as well as the setting of the last wars between the US Army and the Apache warrior tribes.