Michael Portillo's first stop aboard the Southwest Chief is Dodge City, Kansas, a famous frontier town of the Old West, where he visits the notorious Long Branch Saloon, scene of many shoot-outs.

He finds the Dodge City Cowboy Band performing at the city depot and breaks bread with a descendant of a railroad land agent who sold thousands of acres of land to 19th-century European settlers.

Near Lamar, Colorado, Michael visits the scene of a terrible massacre of American Indians, who found themselves in the way of white settlement of the Great Plains.