Produced by Lubin Manufacturing Company and written by Shannon Fife, the film portrayed the rise and destruction of a gold-mining "boomtown" created by a phony real-estate business.

[b] Production reports and reviews published in trade publications and newspapers in the final weeks of 1914 and during 1915, describe it portraying the schemes of a "get-rich-quick" confidence man named James Ewing (Peter Lang).

Ewing's son Bob (B. K. Roberts), just out of college, now arrives and soon falls in love with Dora (Mildred Gregory), unaware that she is married but separated from her frequently drunk and abusive husband, Dick Flint (Robin Williamson).

The happy couple, accompanied by Pastor Royce and Bob's newly "adopted" mother, old "Ma" Dean (Minnie Pearson), leave the valley in a "prairie schooner" (covered wagon) to start new lives elsewhere.

To enhance Shannon Fife's screenplay or "scenario", Fielding organized two major action sequences during production: the collision of two trains and an immense mountain explosion with a landslide.

The centerpiece of the film's plot was a gold-mining boomtown, an elaborate set built at Betzwood and populated during production by hundreds of extras, including many genuine Pennsylvania miners who were brought to Lubin's facilities.

[9]In the January 10, 1915 issue of The Chicago Daily Tribune, the newspaper's "Movie Land" reporter, following a preview of the film, also compliments Fielding's portrayal of the set's construction "during the action of the play" itself and for "showing how mushroom towns spring up during a 'strike gold quick' craze.

[11] Fielding, not missing an opportunity for free publicity, scheduled the crash to coincide with a "mammoth Labor Day picnic" held outside Philipsburg and attended by an estimated crowd of 10,000 spectators.

[7][11] Siegmund Lubin reportedly spent over $25,000—a monstrous sum in 1914 for a single action sequence—to purchase two old coal-fired locomotives, the needed freight and passenger cars, and to stage the spectacle.

[7][d] Fielding deployed 30 cameramen with 12 different cameras to film the collision, minimizing the chances of losing optimal footage of the one-take event due to either malfunctioning equipment or other factors.

[12][13] That release, however, was postponed and the film's running time was expanded to five reels, likely with intentions to increase the production's box-office potential by lengthening scenes related to its action sequences, which were often called "punches" at studios and in the media during the silent era.

[10] Advertisements for the film, descriptions of its content, and reviews began appearing in leading trade publications and newspapers by mid-December 1914 and early 1915, over seven months prior to the picture's initial distribution.

Finally, by the first of May several major trade publications announced "the week of July 5"; nevertheless, even in its June issue the movie-fan monthly Motion Picture Magazine still advertised the film's length being in "4 Parts", as being a four-reeler rather than a five-reeler.

In addition, Lubin's financial circumstances and production calendars had been seriously affected by a disastrous fire in June 1914, a blaze that destroyed millions of feet of film in the company's main storage vault in Philadelphia.

Later, on October 23, after the film's second, wider release, Thomas C. Kennedy of Motography assesses it in greater detail and praises the scenes that "compel one's attention":The train wreck is wonderful.

[5] Solomon was impressed as well by the train wreck, although she found Fielding's direction of camera work and his editing decisions for the mountain explosion even more effective, especially in one instance, recounting how "a little baby cooing in the midst of the landslide and finally coming out unharmed, relieves the tenseness of the big scene and touches the hearts of the spectators.

Some brief footage of the noted train wreck does exist in another film, in a surviving copy of "A Partner to Providence", which is episode or "chapter" 8 of The Beloved Adventurer, a Lubin serial released in the final months of 1914.