For the benefit of all Security Hazard readers, here is a full transcript of the video:
Prologue: Stranger there’s a welcome for you.
In 1959, musical maestro Barry Gray approached Gerry Anderson and the AP Films team with a concept for a television series set in the Wild West. AP Films had recently started developing the technique that would later become known as Supermarionation to produce puppets with automatic electronic lip sync. Having worked for several years under the control of children’s author Roberta Leigh on The Adventures of Twizzle and the first series of Torchy The Battery Boy, Barry Gray’s Western series was the stepping stone for AP Films to become television producers in their own right.
Gray developed the format of the series in collaboration with Gerry Anderson to eventually create the Western with a difference that we now know as Four Feather Falls. Starring Sheriff Tex Tucker and the citizens of the small town of Four Feather Falls, each episode sees Tex fight off evil bandits and crooked criminals with the help of four magic feathers in his hat, gifted from the headdress of Big Chief Kalamakooya. The feathers enable Tex’s dog Dusty and horse Rocky to talk to him, and for Tex’s guns to open fire on enemies without him needing to be quick on the draw. Four Feather Falls is a series not only sprinkled with magic and original songs from Barry Gray, but also the classic action and adventure associated with the Western genre, from haunted mines to bank robberies to train chases. Gerry Anderson’s team ultimately produced 39, 15-minute instalments of Four Feather Falls for Granada Television.
The writers of the series were Mary Cathcart Borer, Phil Wrestler, Jill Algood, and Hugh Woodhouse, working under his brother’s name, Martin, as a pseudonym. Between them, they built a whole world of locations in and around the town of Four Feather Falls based on Barry Gray and Gerry Anderson’s outline. The continuity for this children’s puppet series was remarkably sophisticated and consistent, which meant that small characters and locations would pop up again and again with little contradiction. By the end of the series, the town of Four Feather Falls was equipped with all the essential services of a thriving Western settlement, and we also had a good idea of who lived and worked in the surrounding desert and grasslands, good and bad.
As I watched the series develop, I began to see just how good the world-building of Four Feather Falls was, and I started to take note of the various locations from the series and the details provided by the characters’ dialogue and other visual clues. While some places only appeared in one or two episodes, other names began to pop up as obvious landmarks for the people of Four Feather Falls which clearly had fixed locations across the series. Characters heading towards and returning from particular locations would often travel in the same direction or cover the same distance. We learned about other towns nearby such as Silver City or Jamestown and where they were in relation to Four Feather Falls.
With all of this information collected, I began the process of plotting the most consistent details in relation to one another, and with a bit of creativity to tie it all together and some logical reasoning to gloss over a few minor inconsistencies that crop up, I was able to produce a map. This is it, Four Feather Falls, Kansas, USA. Every location from every episode has its place and I can’t wait to tell you all about the work that went into mapping this magical region of the Wild West. Let’s get into it.
Part 1: The only place on earth to be.
The first question I wanted to answer was figuring out roughly which part of the USA the series is supposed to take place in. It isn’t made entirely obvious on-screen but Barry Gray’s early, handwritten notes about the series conclusively tell us everything we need to know. The initial working title for the series, which became the song sung over the end credits, was “Two Gun Tex of Texas” – so we immediately know that the star of the show, Tex Tucker, came from Texas.
The series is set in “The ‘Nineties” – that’s the 1890’s of course.
Finally, the place is clearly labelled as “Four Feather Falls, Kansas.”
Many of Barry Gray’s original concepts for the characters and their names were changed over the course of the series’ development. Buster, the Sheriff’s simple, but well meaning assistant was dropped, while Rusty the dog became Dusty, and Snowy the horse became Rocky. The name “Spelltown” was briefly considered but corrected to “Four Feather Falls.”
Documentation shows that the setting of Kansas remained in place throughout the series’ development, but the only reference to the state actually made in the finished programme comes from the song over the end credits, “Two Gun Tex” with the line “He’s known throughout all Kansas, through every single mile…”
The 1890’s Kansas setting is approximated well on-screen. The U.S. state of Kansas was formally created in 1861 and saw a great industry in cattle drives develop which is referenced frequently in the series as the railroad was inching its way across the country. The desert landscape seen in the series was forged in a harsh climate. Land was cheap so small towns made up of ordinary folk migrating to the area were able to establish themselves easily.
With the fictional town of Four Feather Falls firmly placed in Kansas, and Tex’s home originally situated somewhere in Texas, we know that Tex travelled North during the events of the first episode. Specifically, Grandpa Twink tells Jake that Tex came from “the valley.” The term “the valley” is a local name for the Lower Rio Grande Valley at the southernmost tip of Texas on the border with Mexico. Tex would have travelled north through the state and likely stopped off in Dallas along the way. Dallas is referenced a couple of times during the later episodes The Ma Jones Story, A Cure For Everything, and Ambush – which features a train carrying passengers from the town of Four Feather Falls back home from the Dallas Fair.
The state of Oklahoma in between Texas and Kansas didn’t enter the union of the United States until 1907, after the events of the series took place. In the 1890s, the region was divided into two territories known as Oklahoma Territory in the west and Indian Territory in the east. In episode one, How It Began, we don’t know the exact location where Tex meets young Makooya for the first time except that the boy’s home is three days away through the mountains. On horseback, that could place them anywhere between 50 to 150 miles away from Kalamakooya’s camp, and therefore suggests that they are in the eastern Indian territory of what is now Oklahoma state.
Travelling over the highlands which Makooya only refers to as “mountain,” they eventually reach the dried up falls from which the town of Four Feather Falls ultimately gets its name. Chief Kalamakooya appears and restores water and vegetation to the area to thank Tex Tucker for saving his son. Based on the geography of all this, I think it’s fair to place the city of Dallas on the map to the southeast of Four Feather Falls. It isn’t until the latter part of the series that the two settlements become connected by the railroad which also arrives from the east.
There are four other major settlements mentioned by name in the series. Kell’s Creek is named in the episode Gun Fight on Main Street as a location outside of Tex’s territory where Cass Morgan robbed a stagecoach. Since it’s outside of Tex’s territory, we can assume it’s some distance off of the map.
Hynes Bend is described as a “terrible, bad town” in the episode Jail Break, and Dusty backs this up in the episode Once A Lawman by telling Tex it’s not a good place for a lawman to visit. In that episode, Tex leaves Four Feather Falls to the west. Fernando encounters Zack Morrill on the trail between Four Feather Falls and Hynes Bend and then they ride west to meet Pedro in the saloon at Hynes Bend. In the official Four Feather Falls annual written by Sylvia Anderson, it is stated in the story The Hold-Up that Hynes Bend is one mile away from Four Feather Falls. I have therefore situated Hynes Bend to the west of Four Feather Falls off the edge of the map.
I’ve taken a creative liberty with the next location. The early episodes Indian Attack and Sheriff For A Day mention Jamestown while the later episode, A Lawman Rides Alone, has Tex taking the villainous Blackie Strutt to James City to stand trial. The locations carry such similar names and James City is only mentioned once, so I’ve decided to combine the two and call it Jamestown. Maybe by the time we get to A Lawman Rides Alone, the place is considered more of a city than a town. I’m not sure. Anyway, in Indian Attack, Dan Morse sends a telegram to the Marshall of Jamestown for help, while Sheriff For A Day has Big Ben send a fake telegram to Tex asking him to escort the stagecoach through Redstone Pass on its way to Jamestown. Of course, Sheriff For A Day isn’t necessarily a trustworthy source for information as most of the episode takes place in Little Jake’s dream. We can assume a lot of the geographical details are accurate but it’s worth keeping in mind. We’ll talk more about Redstone Pass in the next part of the video to cement these facts, but if Sheriff For A Day is accurate and Redstone Pass connects Four Feather Falls with Jamestown, then Jamestown, or James City, must be situated to the Northeast of Four Feather Falls. Coincidentally, there is a real settlement in the Northeastern region of Kansas called Jamestown.
The final neighbouring location to Four Feather Falls is Silver City. Silver City gets mentioned in a total of seven episodes and one story from the annual and is therefore the most significant neighbour to Four Feather Falls when it comes to placing it on the map. In the episode Frame-Up, Tex is travelling from Four Feather Falls to Silver City to meet Sheriff Jameson who is new to the territory. When Rocky is stolen during the night, Tex and Dusty continue on the trail through the prairie by foot before meeting Ruff Snyder, who informs them they’re 15 miles away from Silver City. Having purchased Snyder’s spare horse, Tex and Dusty get further along the trail and describe Silver City as being just over a ridge. Then, they’re captured and wrongfully imprisoned by Sheriff Jameson in Silver City’s jailhouse. Essentially, what we learn from Frame-Up is that the journey between Four Feather Falls and Silver City is long and arduous but the two towns do share a territory. This is backed up in the next episode, Gold Diggers in which Marvin Jackson breaks the key to the strongroom of the Four Feather Falls bank and the nearest locksmith in Silver City won’t be able to get to them for a couple of days.
In The Toughest Guy In The West, Grandpa Twink and Ma Jones are riding through Buffalo Pass towards Silver City and get caught up in an attack between some comanche warriors, and the horse thief, cattle rustler and gun runner known as Indian Jack. Doc Haggerty seems to suggest in a lascivious manner that Twink and Ma Jones travel together to Silver City quite regularly. This starts a trend to suggest that the journey between Four Feather Falls and Silver City gets easier as the series goes on. Maybe Silver City expanded to cover a wider area, or the trail was altered to make it more direct and easier to traverse. We don’t know that for sure, but it’s worth noting that towards the end of the series, Silver City starts to be visited and referenced more and more.
In Horse Thieves, Dan Morse offers to wire over to Silver City to get some spare horses because everyone in Four Feather Falls has had their horses stolen. In Teething Troubles, Marvin Jackson is getting ready to leave for Silver City for business, and they have a dentist man whom he persuades to come over to Four Feather Falls and cure Rocky’s toothache. In Happy Birthday, Grandpa Twink and Little Jake ride over to Silver City to buy a birthday present for Tex, although Makooya doesn’t think they’ll have time to get the gift back in time for the party later that evening. Finally Ride ‘Em Cowboy depicts a rodeo contest being held between Four Feather Falls and Silver City with plenty of friendly, and unfriendly rivalry becoming apparent between the neighbouring towns. All of these little references and tidbits suggest that Silver City might be some distance from Four Feather Falls but to travel between the two isn’t necessarily that difficult or drawn out by the time we get to later episodes. I’ve therefore placed Silver City at the end of a long, but simple trail to the northwest of Four Feather Falls.
With all those locations situated around the town of Four Feather Falls, it seems fitting that we now talk about the layout of Four Feather Falls itself. Come with me for a walk down Main Street…
Part 2: You’ll always find a vacant chair
After producing the pilot episode of Four Feather Falls in the ballroom of Islet Park manor house, the AP Films crew moved to a small warehouse unit on the Slough Trading Estate to establish their own custom-built studio. The set for the town of Four Feather Falls was one of the largest built for the series, but only rarely did we see anything beyond a single street with buildings on one side. Of course, there were buildings on both sides, but most of the action was filmed facing just one direction. For the sake of simplicity on this map, I’ve matched the orientation of the town so that the angle we usually view the buildings from is facing north, while the lesser seen parts of the town are on the south side.
The location of the key buildings in the town remain consistent throughout the series with only minor details changed as things progressed. Starting from the west side of town, where most people enter and exit from, we have a building carrying the sign “Madison & Co. Livery.” We never meet the owners of this business but the livery is the first thing we see whenever folks arrive in Four Feather Falls after their journey across the prairie.
Next to the livery is the town’s telegraph office, operated by Dan Morse. Although the telegraph office is visible from the very first episode, we don’t actually meet Dan until episode six, Indian Attack, or see inside the office until episode seven, Sheriff For A Day.
On the other side of the telegraph office is Ma Jones’ General Store. The only noteworthy thing about the General Store is that the episode Trouble In Yellow Gulch shows us an area around the back of the building where Ma keeps Bill Asher’s shipment of dynamite which is stolen by Pedro and Fernando.
Next to the store is “Denison’s House”, the saloon bar and hotel operated by Slim Jim Denison. Offering drinks, music and entertainment, a bed for the night, and hot food, the saloon is at the heart of the community and towers above the other buildings in town. In Indian Attack, the roof of the saloon makes for the perfect vantage point to watch out for incoming threats. Slim Jim and the interior of the saloon aren’t shown on-screen until episode eleven, Frame-Up. The upstairs room is accessible from the inside, and via a staircase outside in the alleyway on the east side, and also via an unseen back exit used by Missouri Mike in the episode Safe As Houses and Buck Reevers in Fancy Shooting. The upstairs room has a balcony which offers the opportunity for Tex to address the whole town during Election Day.
The alleyway next to the saloon leads from Main Street to some stables where Tex’s horse Rocky resides. In Ride ‘Em Cowboy, the alley also connects to an unseen area where Tex watches Bart Stevens and the Silver City boys show off their rodeo shooting skills. The stables are behind the Sheriff’s Office where Tex Tucker lives and works. The small building features an office, a bedroom, and a small jail cell. In the episode Gold Diggers, Pedro and Fernando’s treasure map tells them that gold is buried 20 paces from the hitching rail by the saloon, which turns out to be underneath the jailhouse – ultimately suggesting that the jailhouse was built some time after the saloon and its hitching rail.
What occupies the space next to the Sheriff’s Office on the east side of town is up for some debate. Let’s talk about Grandpa Twink’s house. In the first episode, How It Began, it’s established that Twink’s house has a view of Main Street, but its exact position is not shown in relation to the rest of the town because they were likely built as two separate sets in the Islet Park ballroom. In Indian Attack, Twink can hear someone over by his house whilst manning the barricade on Main Street, and in turn Pedro can see the saloon from behind Twink’s house. Based on the direction that characters travel in, it becomes apparent that Twink’s house is somewhere close to the Sheriff’s Office, or at the very least on that eastern side of the town.
In the final scene of The Toughest Guy In The West, we watch as Twink runs away from the “western salute” offered by the townsfolk. He runs past the Sheriff’s office and jumps over a picket fence next to another building which could be his house. The suggestion therefore being that Twink lives directly next door to the Sheriff’s office, with nothing but open countryside to the east. In Gun Fight on Main Street, Twink approaches his house from the western side of town which further supports this geography. Furthermore in the episode Bandits Abroad, we watch Pedro and Fernando getting chased out of town on the eastern side, past the Sheriff’s office, past Twink’s house, and out into the countryside. Keep in mind again that Bandits Abroad is another dream episode so anyone could argue that it isn’t strictly a reliable source of information.
The issue with Twink’s house really comes with the penultimate episode of the series, Ambush. Tex leaves Main Street to meet the train from the eastern side of town from the Sheriff’s Office, but Twink’s house is no longer visible next to the office, just open grassland. It’s possible that the building we see isn’t the Sheriff’s office but it does rather look like it. It’s also possible that this blurry building seen in the next shot is Twink’s house.
I’m inclined to believe the evidence presented by most of the series which suggests that Twink’s house is next door to the Sheriff’s office and the easternmost end of Four Feather Falls. It’s odd that we never see a definitive shot of the house directly in relation to the rest of the town, but there are enough clues to support it sitting somewhere on the east end of Main Street.
Beyond that, the television series shows us nothing further to the East, although an illustration in the annual story The Deputy suggests that there are two unidentified buildings beyond the sheriff’s office. I’m choosing to follow the annual only so far, because it depicts quite a few things which aren’t shown or referenced in the series. A colouring page, for example, indicates that Four Feather Falls has its own bakery, while the story The Strolling Players suggests the town has a theatre, or at least a theatre group based somewhere else. I’ve left those off the map so that we’re exclusively dealing with settings from the television series.
Now let’s cross the street to look at the rest of the town. The building most prominently seen on the southern side of Main Street is Jackson’s Bank. Above the bank on the second storey is a room which Hank Frisby stays in during The Best Laid Plans so that Pedro and Fernando can access the strongroom directly below it. Also established in The Best Laid Plans is a barn next door to the bank where Pedro and Fernando can see the upstairs window. In A Lawman Rides Alone, we see that this barn stores hay and is directly opposite the Sheriff’s Office to the east of the bank. Lucky Chance and Matt Ames take cover in this barn while shooting at the office in A Bad Name, but what used to be an alleyway next to Jackson’s bank is now blocked by some kind of fence. The barn later seems to become the base of operations for Hyam S Wright, the phoney medicine man in A Cure For Everything. Inside, he pitches a tent for his miracle bathtub. In Happy Birthday we get a glimpse of a barn opposite Twink’s front yard which further suggests his house is next to the Sheriff’s office.
On the other side of the bank, towards the west of town we rarely get a chance to see very much at all since this is usually where the cameras are filming the action. It’s clear that the bank extends quite far down Main Street as it’s visible from the saloon. Next to it is a building which doesn’t appear to have a specific use but is seen prominently in the episode Election Day. Election Day actually does a good job of showing us more of the town than usual. The building next to the bank is used as a polling office. Just to open things up I’ll be calling it ‘Town Hall’ since it’s quite a large property and probably serves multiple functions.
As well as a front entrance on Main Street, there is an alleyway adjacent to the Town Hall with a side entrance that is opposite Ma Jones’ General Store. Jake and Dusty watch the theft of the ballot box from this alleyway which has another unidentified building at the end of it. Jake and Tex appear to meet behind the Town Hall since Jake exits the alleyway towards the east side of town but doesn’t appear to end up on Main Street.
From these scenes in the alleyway, we’ve deduced that there is at least one more building in town on the southwest corner of Main Street. The only location we’ve yet to place on the map, is seen just once in the whole series, and that is Doc Haggerty’s office as shown in A Cure For Everything. We don’t know where this office is in relation to the rest of the town, so I think it’s fair for us to make the leap and assume it’s in that building adjacent to the Town Hall and opposite the Telegraph Office.
And that is Main Street. A fairly straightforward layout only made complicated by one or two minor continuity issues and some areas which only show up in a handful of episodes.
But what about the lands beyond Four Feather Falls itself? It’s a Wild West paradise of bandit hideouts, caves, canyons, mines, railroads and much more. Well, we can place all that on the map too…
Part 3: Means heaven on the range to me
So much of the series is about characters travelling from A to B. People arriving in town dramatically, leaving town dramatically, making schemes in remote locations, or ranchers calling Tex out to solve all their problems. Some of the paths in and around Four Feather Falls are trodden more than others, but I’ve tried my best to arrange all of them into some sort of order and I think the writers of the series must have had something similar in mind when they were coming up with stories. There’s a lot of consistency between episodes that made all this mapping possible in the first place. Let’s start in the west.
As we’ve discussed earlier, the road from Silver City to Four Feather Falls seems to be long but relatively easy for anyone to navigate. In The Toughest Guy In The West, Twink’s horse and buggy are said to return to the town from the direction of Buffalo Pass, suggesting that this is the name of the route towards Silver City. In Happy Birthday, Makooya meets Jake and Twink at a waterhole somewhere on the road between Four Feather Falls and Silver City, so we’ll place that over here where the road from Hynes Bend meets Buffalo Pass.
The episode Trouble In Yellow Gulch sets us up with an interesting problem. Fernando clearly states that in order to get to Four Feather Falls, you either have to go through Yellow Gulch, or Black Boulder Canyon. In that episode Ma Jones says that once her and Twink ride through Yellow Gulch they’ll be home, suggesting that it’s right next to the town. Thanks to Pedro’s toll on Yellow Gulch, folks are forced to navigate Black Boulder Canyon instead to get back to Four Feather Falls. As its name suggests, Black Boulder is a pass dominated by an enormous black boulder balanced precariously at the top of the hill which could fall down on anyone passing through. At the end of the episode, Tex forces Black Boulder to roll away in a different direction straight down on top of Yellow Gulch, rather than Black Boulder Canyon. This ultimately suggests that Yellow Gulch and Black Boulder Canyon run directly parallel to each other with only a steep incline in between them, which formerly had the infamous Black Boulder perched at the top of it.
So, if Yellow Gulch and Black Boulder Canyon are side by side but are the only ways into Four Feather Falls, it makes the most sense to connect them both to Buffalo Pass on the road to Silver City, and have them meet again at a junction just outside the town. I’ve decided that this junction is the one seen prominently in the episode Escort. When Alvin P. Huckenbacker arrives from a westerly direction, he comes to a tree at a junction where there is a sign indicating the way to Four Feather Falls. The other direction leads to Pedro and Fernando’s shack. High up in the hills, Big Ben is able to see Pedro and Fernando switching the sign around. These are presumably the Yellow Gulch Hills where, in the episode A Close Shave, Pedro and Red Scalp suggest that there is an Indian camp. Of course, they could be lying as part of their plan, but let’s assume Tex would have already known where the camp was and that they’re telling the truth. This places Red Scalp’s camp in the Yellow Gulch Hills, presumably next to the path through Yellow Gulch itself.
Taking the path north from the junction seen in Escort, we pass the location I’ve chosen for Ben’s hideout. The place goes through a few changes throughout the series. We first see it in the episode Gun Runners, and Tex seems to have no issue finding it on his way back to Four Feather Falls. In A Little Bit Of Luck, Ben and his associate Johnny say that they have a hideout just outside of the town which we could infer is Ben’s usual hideout. In Fancy Shooting, Buck Reevers is on his way to Four Feather Falls when he rides past Ben’s hideout, and then enters Four Feather Falls from the western side of town. With these scraps of information, we can ascertain that Ben’s hideout is most likely somewhere close to Four Feather Falls, on the west side, perhaps overlooking the Yellow Gulch Hills and close to Pedro and Fernando’s shack because of all the collaborating that they do. So I’ve placed it on the nearest point to the north of the town.
The issue of Pedro and Fernando’s shack is rather less straightforward. In the second episode, Kidnapped, it is established that the bandit duo have a hideout not far from Four Feather Falls, and Redstone Pass is the most direct route to get from the town up to said hideout. Earlier on, I mentioned that Redstone Pass was a potential route towards Jamestown in the northeast, so that places Pedro and Fernando’s shack somewhere on that road. We’re also told by Tex in Kidnapped that there is only one approach to the hideout… despite the fact that in the next episode, Pedro Has A Plan, Tex and Grandpa Twink establish that they don’t actually know exactly where the shack is located… Except that in episode eight, Dusty Becomes Deputy, Tex seems to know where it is again when he sees the shack on fire. Yes, Pedro and Fernando burn down their own shack in order to create a diversion. They’re really s mart guys. The fire is visible when looking out to the west side of town but who the heck knows how reliable that is because of the perspective and implied distance of the effect not coming across accurately.
In a nice touch of continuity, Fernando is shown repairing the roof of their shack following the fire although they also find that they are in possession of a box marked ‘DEED’ that they didn’t know about before. So maybe this is a different shack that they’ve recently acquired? As mentioned earlier, the dialogue in Escort indicates that the route which doesn’t lead to Four Feather Falls is the trail going up to Pedro and Fernando’s shack.
Then we get to the really messy part. Bandits Abroad is a dream episode told from the mind of Fernando, but it contains a lot of detail about the location of Pedro and Fernando’s shack which may or may not reflect reality. Marvin Jackson and Dan Morse are seen chasing Pedro and Fernando out of Four Feather Falls towards the eastern side of town. The trouble is, we’ve established Redstone Pass on the west of the town and if there’s only one way of approaching the shack itself, we’ve got to do some creative work to make all these paths make sense from both the west and easterly directions.
To complicate things further, Pedro and Fernando agree to split up on their way back to the shack. Pedro is going to take the path through Dead Man’s Gulch while Fernando takes the Canyon Pass. Regarding Dead Man’s Gulch, we’ve previously heard about Dead Man’s Hill in Gun Runners which is where Red Scalp and Ben agree to meet. Meanwhile, Canyon Pass is only ever mentioned here in Bandits Abroad. Then, Pedro encounters Fernando’s doppelganger, Pancho Gomez, while riding through Dead Man’s Gulch. Pedro is confused because he clearly states that Fernando couldn’t have gotten to Dead Man’s Gulch from Canyon Pass, and he obviously doesn’t twig that Pancho is not Fernando. This therefore suggests that the two paths are very separate and don’t intersect. Dead Man’s Gulch leads to the shack in some way and proves to be a faster route than Fernando’s path through Canyon Pass because Pedro and Pancho arrive first.
Meanwhile, Tex Tucker plans to head off the bandits at Dead Man’s Gulch a couple of miles from Pedro’s shack. Pedro gets tied up in the shack by Pancho, and then Pancho aims to travel back through Dead Man’s Gulch, just missing Fernando as he arrives from Canyon Pass. Pancho exits screen left, and Fernando arrives on screen right outside the window of the shack.
So, contrary to what has been said earlier, we actually now have three paths which all lead to Pedro and Fernando’s shack. Redstone Pass, Dead Man’s Gulch, and Canyon Pass. But the dialogue in Kidnapped actually says that there’s only one approach to the hideout, not that Redstone Pass is the only route between it and Four Feather Falls. So as long as we only arrive at the shack from one direction with all three of these paths, the dialogue is still valid. So, how does Fernando manage to arrive from the opposite direction that Pancho leaves in without the two of them seeing each other if there’s only one path? Well, by connecting Canyon Pass and Dead Man’s Gulch in one loop, the whole thing becomes possible with the addition of a short trail connecting Redstone Pass to Canyon Pass. If the shack sits to the east of where Canyon Pass joins up with Dead Man’s Gulch, then we have just one path approaching the shack with a potential for three other routes to take you up there from Four Feather Falls.
How simple is that? Of course, it would be simpler to say that Bandits Abroad isn’t canon because it’s all a dream anyway… but where’s the fun in that?
Let’s step away from hideouts and confusing pathways to talk about some of the industry to the northeast of Four Feather Falls. First there’s Bill Asher’s gold mine. Bill first appears in the episode Dusty Becomes Deputy when depositing $5,000 into the bank before he moves on to St. Louis in Missouri. He’s been working in the same cave for five years and now plans to live an easier life. Despite this claim, he turns up a couple of weeks later to pick up some dynamite for the gold mine during Trouble At Yellow Gulch. Anyway, assuming Bill Asher’s gold mine is the main source of gold during the series we can use a few details from other episodes to locate it. In A Little Bit of Luck, a gold consignment is being brought to Four Feather Falls from the mine. Jackson, Twink, and crooked Marshall Ike Burns ride out to meet the consignment, while Jim stands guard on the roof of the saloon, Doc Haggerty watches the west side of town, and Dan is stationed at Redstone Pass. If the consignment is due to come through Redstone Pass, the mine must be situated to the north of the town, which makes sense considering how rocky the landscape appears to be in the areas around Pedro and Fernando’s shack what with all the hills, gulches, and canyons all over the place.
Then, in Once A Lawman, a similar plot sees Twink, Doc, and Jackson bringing another shipment down from the gold mine. It is specifically said that Jackson brings it “down” from the gold mine to Four Feather Falls which seems to confirm it’s up in the hills and/or north of the town.
The other nearby mine is the Eureka Silver Mine featured in the episode Chance of a Ghost. There isn’t too much given away about the geography of this location in the episode except that it’s close to Four Feather Falls and Joe the night watchmen manages to run all the way to the saloon from the mine within a relatively short time. Gold and silver deposits are generally found in similar places so to keep things simple, I’ve placed the Eureka Silver Mine and Asher’s Gold Mine in the northeast hills in the direction of Jamestown, primarily accessible from Redstone Pass from the west of town, or past Dead Man’s Hill on the east of town.
I’ve also placed the office and station of the Canyon Railroad in this area. The episode First Train Through boldly declares that a railroad has been built through Four Feather Falls. That obviously can’t be taken to mean it goes straight down the middle of Main Street, but it must certainly pass close by. We see the train travel from screen right to screen left through canyons and tunnels, suggesting it’s coming from an easterly direction. This ties in with the notion that Dallas, Texas is southeast of Four Feather Falls as that’s where the train arrives from in the episode Ambush. For the first time since the pilot episode, First Train Through shows us the same falls from which Four Feather Falls gets its name. The falls flood the track. Since the first episode showed Tex arriving at the falls from the southeast, and the falls are presumably fairly close to the town since the town is called Four Feather Falls, there has to be a point where the track, the falls, and the town are relatively close together, along with some hills with a high altitude view of the area that Tex is able to survey everything from. In Ambush, Tex meets the train coming from Dallas by leaving town in an easterly direction. This therefore points to the falls and the station being to the east of Four Feather Falls only a short distance away. In Ambush, Red Scalp’s comanches are shown coming down from the hills in order to attack the train. When drawing the route of the railroad, I tried to capture as many of the twists and turns and tunnels as the series depicts on-screen. After arriving at the Four Feather Falls station to the east of town, the railroad continues south and the line treads the border between the south of Four Feather Falls, and some countryside, before turning northwest and extending in the direction of Silver City, the next largest town.
The area south of Four Feather Falls is where I’ve placed land shared by Kalamakooya’s tribe, and below that, the many ranchers that are seen throughout the series. In the episode Happy Birthday, it is established that Makooya has a small flower garden just outside town on the road between Four Feather Falls and Silver City. Ride ‘Em Cowboy also establishes a water well close to the site of the rodeo, the town, and Kalamakooya’s camp. Let’s assume that the rodeo seen in Ride ‘Em Cowboy takes place at one of the many ranches outside of town and address that in a moment. Kalamakooya’s camp is not shown often in the series, but it’s likely fairly close to the town while also enjoying privacy and the benefit of the waterfalls and the farmland in the southeast of the region.
Speaking of water, the episode A Cure For Everything establishes a secret spring used by Kalamakooya’s medicine man, so I’ve placed this not far from the falls. Also close to this area I’ve placed the fishing creek and the caves which Little Jake and Makooya explore in the episode, Trapped.
Finally, we have the land belonging to seven, yes seven, different ranch owners seen or mentioned throughout the series. I have placed these properties together so that they are all close to a water source which makes the ground fertile and all connected to Four Feather Falls on the west side because that’s the part of town most people enter and exit through. In the episode Buffalo Rocky there are two ranchers we hear about but never meet – Sam Burg and Buck Wheatley. Wheatley reports via Twink that he’s had his horses stolen, and Sam Burg almost gets his horses stolen until the thief, fellow rancher Pete Carson, comes across a trap set by Tex and Abe Weeks. More on Abe’s part in this later. So, already we have to account for three patches of land with Burg, Carson and Wheatley’s ranches all established as being somewhere within Tex’s territory. I’ve therefore placed those closest to the town to ensure they’re within his jurisdiction. Next to that on the road towards Kell’s Creek, I’ve placed the ranch belonging to Joe “Lucky” Chance. Since Lucky and his foreman Matt can’t be certain which town Big Ben is making for at the beginning of the episode, it suggests that they’re chasing him from some distance away, hence why I’ve positioned Lucky’s ranch close to the southernmost point of the map.
Next, the episode Land Grabbers introduces us to Morg Fenton, who is said to have the biggest patch of land in the region, but he wants more. He has his eyes on Abe Weeks’ ranch, better known as Circle Z, because it has the best water available for the herd. Tex is also adamant that Circle Z is outside of his own territory, so there’s not much he can do to save Abe from Fenton’s scare tactics. Based on this information, I had to place Abe Weeks’ ranch at a distance away from Four Feather Falls so that it lay just beyond Tex’s boundary line – that is until he purchases the ranch at the end of the episode to resolve the conflict. The fact that Circle Z is close to a good water source also ties in with what we see in Buffalo Rocky which sees the tracks of the stolen horses from Abe’s land getting traced to a stream. I’ve therefore placed the area downstream from the falls and the creek, next to a large patch of land owned by Morg Fenton… before he was arrested at least.
One more ranch which may or may not be real comes from the dream episode Bandits Abroad as Marvin Jackson and Dan Morse ride back into town having spent a pleasant evening at Zeke’s ranch. We don’t know anything about Zeke. In fact we don’t even know his last name, or if he even exists… So, for argument’s sake, I’ve called him Zeke Smith and placed his land on the road to Kell’s Creek heading south.
Epilogue: There’s always magic in the air.
And that, everyone, is my map of Four Feather Falls. There are some minor locations like little shacks and hills that turn up unnamed in various episodes that I haven’t placed on here but I didn’t want to add too much extra clutter.
I am so happy with the way all this came together. I have always adored the mixture of quaint charm and serious Western drama that Four Feather Falls offers up. It’s one of the most underrated Gerry Anderson series and it saw the start of the Supermarionation phenomenon which defined Anderson’s career. I was blown away when rewatching the series again just how richly detailed this little puppet show is. Not only the locations we’ve mapped, but the characters, their stories, and their connections with the land are far deeper than I would have expected. I hope that the next time you watch the series, you can appreciate the attention to detail that went into making Four Feather Falls an inviting, thrilling, and magical experience for everyone watching the series in 1960.
If you like what you see, I have made a print of the map available on RedBubble, so you can display the map and study it closely. There isn’t a lot of Four Feather Falls artwork out there so I hope I’ve done my part.
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Thank you for watching and I will see you again soon. Bye for now.
Security Hazard 