How the West Was Won is an American Western television series that starred James Arness, Eva Marie Saint, Fionnula Flanagan, Bruce Boxleitner, and Richard Kiley.

The pilot movie shows Zeb not having seen his family for ten years and with the Civil War approaching, deciding to visit them in Manassas, Virginia.

Luke arrives at the family homestead near the Platte River in western Nebraska and tells his mother Kate not only about Tim's death, but also that he is now an Army deserter as well as an outlaw in Missouri and must leave and be on the run.

The series continues when after a period of relative quiet, a bounty hunter named Captain Grey, an Army Provost Marshal pursuing Union soldiers accused of desertion, arrives at the homestead to arrest Luke.

Stillman, the former Missouri sheriff, is now a wealthy businessman with a crippled arm and is obsessed with revenge against Luke, but is killed by Zeb in a gunfight.

By this time, Luke has gained a reputation as a skilled gunfighter and is continually fleeing pursuit, having not been cleared of the Missouri charges, even at the series finale.

Other guest stars include Richard Basehart, Brian Keith, Cameron Mitchell, Morgan Woodward, Ken Curtis, Michael Conrad, Christopher Lee, Britt Lind (Luke's first season girlfriend), Elyssa Davalos (Luke's second season girlfriend), Tim Matheson, John Crawford, Wright King, John Dehner, Lloyd Bridges (Elyssa Davalos's sheriff father), Don Murray (Kate's first season love interest), Royal Dano (Britt Lind's father), Parley Baer, Anthony Zerbe (bounty hunter, primary first season villain), Woody Strode (Indian chief), David Huddleston with Gene Evans and Jack Elam (both mountain men).

In January 1978, a nearly 400-page "epic length" paperback novelization of a number of early episodes, written by Lou Cameron, was published by Ballantine Books.

A prolific and versatile paperback scribe whose credits include winning a Western Writers of America Spur Award for his novel The Spirit Horses, Cameron's novelization adapted teleplays and screen stories by Calvin Clements, Colley Cibber, Howard Fast, William Kelley, John Mantley, Katharyn Michaelian, Jack Miller and Earl W. Wallace.