On June 24, 1949, Hopalong Cassidy galloped his trusty horse Topper across the small black and white screens set in large wooden cabinets dominating living rooms across America. Between then and the late 1960s, more than 100 westerns — everything from The Lone Ranger and Gunsmoke to Maverick and Wagon Train — dominated television.
And, then they seemed to ride off into the sunset like the best of our cowboy heroes did.
While there are scant few “horse operas” as they were once called, on TV these days, the genre is alive and well on Netflix. The streaming service is loaded with westerns including series like Longmire and individual movies like No Country for Old Men.
Here’s a sampler of seven westerns you might enjoy after riding that dusty interstate trail, pardner.
