With this first episode of the 6th season, Frank McGrath, Terry Wilson, and Denny Miller are now listed in the opening credits. Robert Horton is no longer with the show. As with Ward Bond when he died, no mention is made in the story about why he is gone.
This was the first episode of this series to be broadcast on ABC. It had debuted on NBC in 1957, and would last another three years on ABC, for a total run of eight seasons.
This episode's "message" of tolerance and non-judgmentalism, originally broadcast at a time of racial tension in America, was unusual, especially for a Western themed series.
Wagon Train Tracker: The Season 6 train is first encountered with no specific geographic reference, but they are fighting Comancheros (all-purpose Western villains, but in nominal reality mixed-race traders who operated between Santa Fe, New Mexico and the Great Plains). That would place the train moving south on the Santa Fe trail, in north central New Mexico.