The Rifleman

The Rifleman is an American Western television series starring Chuck Connors as rancher Lucas McCain and Johnny Crawford as his son Mark McCain. It was set in the 1880s in the fictional town of North Fork, New Mexico Territory. The show was filmed in black and white, in half-hour episodes. The Rifleman aired on ABC from September 30, 1958, to April 8, 1963, as a production of Four Star Television. It was one of the first primetime series on US television to show a single parent raising a child. The program was titled to reflect McCain's use of a Winchester Model 1892 rifle, a historical anachronism, as the show was set in the 1880s, and customized to allow repeated firing by cycling its lever action. He demonstrated this technique in the opening credits, as well as a second modification that allowed him to cycle the action with one hand using a technique known as "spin-cocking". Overview The series centers on Lucas McCain, a Union veteran of the American Civil War and widower. McCain had been a lieutenant in the 11th Indiana Infantry Regiment, and he had received a battlefield commission at the Battle of Five Forks just before the end of the war. (This conflicts with episode 3/25, "The Prisoner", in which a former Confederate cavalry major states that he was Lieutenant McCain's prisoner after the Battle of Fort Donelson.) Having previously been a homesteader, McCain buys a ranch outside the fictitious town of North Fork, New Mexico Territory, in the pilot episode. His son Mark and he had come from Enid, Oklahoma, following the death of his wife, Margaret (née Gibbs), when his son was six years old. The citizens of North Fork are sometimes willing to subject themselves to tyranny, showing themselves to be cowards in several episodes.