Trivia

The 20 Zane Grey stories sold by Paramount to Favorite Films for theatrical re-release, and then to Unity Television Corp. for television broadcast, are as follows: The Light of Western Stars (1930) (aka "Winning the West"), Fighting Caravans (1931) (aka "Blazing Arrows"), Heritage of the Desert (1932) (aka "When the West Was Young"), The Mysterious Rider (1933) (aka "The Fighting Phantom"), The Thundering Herd (1933) (aka "Buffalo Stampede"), Man of the Forest (1933) (aka "Challenge of the Frontier"), To the Last Man (1933) (aka "Law of Vengeance"), Wagon Wheels (1934) (aka "Caravans West"), Rocky Mountain Mystery (1935) (aka "The Fighting Westerner"), Drift Fence (1936) (aka "Texas Desperadoes"), Desert Gold (1936) (aka "Desert Storm"), The Arizona Raiders (1936) (aka "Bad Men of Arizona"), Arizona Mahoney (1936) (aka "Arizona Thunderbolt"), Forlorn River (1937) (aka "River of Destiny"), Thunder Trail (1937) (aka "Thunder Pass"), Born to the West (1937) (aka "Hell Town"), The Mysterious Rider (1938) (aka "Mark of the Avenger"), Heritage of the Desert (1939) (aka "Heritage of the Plains"), Knights of the Range (1940) (aka "Bad Men of Nevada"), The Light of Western Stars (1940) (aka "Border Renegade").

Solo directorial debut of Henry Hathaway (he had co-directed Behind the Make-Up (1930)).

This is one of 20 Zane Grey stories, filmed by Paramount in the 1930s, which it sold to Favorite Films for re-release, circa 1950-52. The failure of Paramount, the original copyright holder, to renew the film's copyright resulted in it falling into public domain, meaning that virtually anyone could duplicate and sell a VHS/DVD copy of the film. Therefore, many of the versions of this film available on the market are either severely (and usually badly) edited and/or of extremely poor quality, having been duped from second- or third-generation (or more) copies of the film.

When this film was re-released nationally in 1951 by Favorite Films, it was re-titled "When the West Was Young" and often shown in tandem with the re-release of Arizona Mahoney (1936), which had been re-titled "Arizona Raiders".

Re-titled "When the West Was Young", this film was first telecast in Louisville (KY) on 18 September 1953 on WHAS (Channel 11), in Detroit (MI) on 26 February 1954 on WXYZ (Channel 7), in New York City 4 April 1954 on WCBS (Channel 2) and in Los Angeles 15 August 1954 on KNBH (Channel 4). In San Francisco it first hit the airwaves on 31 July 1955 on KPIX (Channel 5).