How The Wild West Was Won with Ray Mears

How The Wild West Was Won journeys into the United States wilderness with bushcraft expert Ray Mears.

Here we’ll explore how the awesome wilderness of the North American continent shaped the story of the Wild West over 150 years ago.

Throughout three different episodes we’ll see just how the old settlers surpassed huge mountain ranges, wide-stretching great plains and harsh deserts to create the buzzling country as we know it today.

Ray Mears shows us just how extraordinary topography, extreme weather and ecology presented both great opportunity and even greater challenges for Native Americans and early pioneers of the Wild West.

Episode 1: Mountains

Episode one takes a look at how the landscapes of America’s three great mountain ranges – the Appalachians, the Rockies and the Sierra Nevada.

Each of these mountain ranges challenged the westward push of the early pioneers and required immense planning, fortitude and luck to cross for any early settlers.

Episode 2: Great Plains

We’ll continue the journey across the United States wilderness and travel across 500,000 square miles of flat, treeless grassland.

These great plains were the setting for some of the Wild West’s most dramatic stories of Plains Indians, wagon trains, homesteaders and cattle drives.

Episode 3: Deserts

In the third and final film, Ray Mears looks at how the landscapes of America’s five great deserts challenged the westward push of the early pioneers.