‘Winds of the Wasteland’: Rewards Flow to Risk-Takers

An early film of how big changes in the Ol' West brought an end to the Pony Express.

Larry Adams (Lane Chandler) and John Blair (John Wayne) keep in step with big changes in the Old West, in "Winds of the Wasteland." Republic Pictures

NR | 55m | Western | 1936

This film opens with a tribute text that dedicates the film to the unsung heroes of the Old West. They gave their lives to bring the thin strands of communication wire across the then great American Desert. They braved “the perils of the trail that the telegraph wires might follow the Pony Express and unite the new cities of the West with the nation’s capital.”