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Sergeant Preston of the Yukon

Sergeant Preston of the Yukon and King, his dog

Here’s some background about Sergeant Preston of the Yukon.

  • It began as a radio program in 1938 called Challenge of the Yukon. It was an adventure series about Sergeant Frank Preston of the North-West Mounted Police.
  • The show’s creators were George W. Trendle and Fran Striker, who were also responsible for The Lone Ranger and The Green Hornet television programs.
  • Writer Tim Dougall was influenced by the poems of Robert W. Service (for example, “The Shooting of Dan McGrew” and “The Cremation of Sam McGee.”
  • It was a TV series from 1947-1949, and was sponsored by the Quaker Oats Company.
  • The name was changed in 1951 to Sergeant Preston of the Yukon when the radio show was brought back to life, and stayed on the air until 1955.
  • The next iteration of Sergeant Preston of the Yukon on TV aired from 1955 to 1958. Dick Simmons (aka Richard Simmons) played the title role of Sgt. Preston. He was aided in his battle against evildoers by his faithful dog Yukon King and his horse Rex.
  • In earlier iterations, King was an Alaskan husky. However, for the later TV series, Yukon King was a malamute (although there are stories about him being part wolf).
  • The Quaker Oats Company sponsored the TV show. Since the action and adventures occurred in Canada’s Yukon Territory (although it was mostly filmed in Ashcroft, Colorado), Quaker’s Puffed Wheat and Puffed Rice cereal boxes offered deeds for one-square-inch plots of land the Klondike through a Klondike Big Inch Land Promotion campaign.
  • Those deeds were actually legitimate, and when the Alaska pipeline was being built, some of them had to be bought up.

If you are interested in owning some episodes of Sergeant Preston of the Yukon, please consider this: [/embedyt]

1 Comment

  1. Susan Poff Wright says:

    Hi Jane, Do you know who the narrator is on the Sargent Preston TV shows…sometimes it sounds like Ronald Reagan.
    Thanks and hope you had a fun Valentine’s Day

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