Double-crossed and left without water in the desert, Cable Hogue is saved when he finds a spring. It is in just the right spot for a much needed rest stop on the local stagecoach line, and Hogue uses this to his advantage. He builds a house and makes money off the stagecoach passengers. Hildy, a prostitute from the nearest town, moves in with him. Hogue has everything going his way until the advent of the automobile ends the era of the stagecoach.
Jesse W. Haywood (Don Knotts) graduates from dental school in Philadelphia in 1870 and goes west to become a frontier dentist. Penelope "Bad Penny" Cushing (Barbara Rhoades) is offered a pardon if she will track down a ring of gun smugglers. She tricks Haywood into a sham marriage as a disguise. Haywood inadvertently becomes the legendary "Doc the Haywood" after he guns down "Arnold the Kid".
Bounty hunters seek shelter from a raging blizzard and get caught up in a plot of betrayal and deception.
A group of people traveling on a stagecoach find their journey complicated by the threat of Geronimo, and learn something about each other in the process.
Union officer Kerry Bradford escapes from a Confederate prison and races to intercept $5 million in gold destined for Confederate coffers. A Confederate sympathizer and a Mexican bandit, each with their own stake in the loot, stand in his way.
During the California Gold Rush, two down-on-their-luck vaudevillians attempt to become wealthy by bringing a girlie show to an all-male western mining town.
A small-town sheriff in the American West enlists the help of a disabled man, a drunk, and a young gunfighter in his efforts to hold in jail the brother of the local bad guy.
Bandit Cheyenne Harry reforms because of the faith placed in him by Molly Young and her father. Soon, however, Harry is lured from the straight and narrow when he meets his old friend Ben Kent and consents to participate in Kent's plan of robbing a stagecoach.
After her stagecoach is ambushed, a woman is tasked with holding a dangerous outlaw captive and must survive the day when the bandit’s gang tries to free him.
Lash and Fuzzy sent to help John Watson with his stage line arrive to find him murdered. Recognizing the outlaws they trail them to their leader Baxter. But before Baxter can tell who the big boss is he is shot. After getting the stage through to assure the mail contract, Lash now realizes who the boss is.
The coming of the railroad to Cedar City spells the end of the stagecoach as the government gives the mail contract to the fastest means of delivery. McCord loses the stagecoach line gambling with the new buyer, but has enough hidden money to buy a ranch and some cattle. To make more money, he starts a gang to rob the railroad, express offices and steal cattle. But the railroads send out special agent Cameron to end his reign of violence.
Questions arise when Senator Stoddard attends the funeral of a local man named Tom Doniphon in a small Western town. Flashing back, we learn Doniphon saved Stoddard, then a lawyer, when he was roughed up by a crew of outlaws terrorizing the town, led by Liberty Valance. As the territory's safety hung in the balance, Doniphon and Stoddard, two of the only people standing up to him, proved to be very important, but different, foes to Valance.
In order to obtain a stage coach mail contract, a new road must be built. A gang of outlaws try to prevent the building of the road.
Stodge City is in the grip of the Rumpo Kid and his gang. Mistaken identity again takes a hand as a 'sanitary engineer' named Marshal P. Knutt is mistaken for a law marshal. Being the conscientious sort, Marshal tries to help the town get rid of Rumpo, and a showdown is inevitable. Marshal has two aids—revenge-seeking Annie Oakley and his sanitary expertise.
When Rocklin arrives in a western town he finds that the rancher who hired him as a foreman has been murdered. He is out to solve the murder and thwart the scheming to take the ranch from its rightful owner.
A gang of bandits takes control of Tucson in preparation for the arrival of a consignment of gold, with only a band of voluntary soldiers trying to outwit them and save the town.
Dan Evans, a small time farmer, is hired to escort Ben Wade, a dangerous outlaw, to Yuma. As Evans and Wade wait for the 3:10 train to Yuma, Wade's gang is racing to free him.
An independent former ranch foreman and an heiress are kidnapped by a trio of ruthless outlaws.
A Confederate troop, led by Captain Lafe Barstow, is prowling the far ranges of California and Nevada in a last desperate attempt to build up an army in the West for the faltering Confederacy. Because the patrol saves a stagecoach, with Johanna Carterr as one of the passengers, from an Indian attack, and is marooned on a rocky mountain, it fails in its mission but the honor of the Old South is upheld.
Hoppy is busy chasing stagecoach bandits who sing as they rob.