The Waltons

About The Waltons

The Waltons is an American television series created by Earl Hamner, Jr., based on his book Spencer's Mountain, and a 1963 film of the same name, starring Henry Fonda and Maureen O'Hara. The show centered around the titular family growing up in a rural Virginia community during the Great Depression and World War II. The series pilot was a television movie entitled The Homecoming: A Christmas Story, broadcast in 1971. The show originally aired in the United States on CBS from 1972 to 1981. After the series left the air, three television movie sequels were broadcast in 1982, with three more following in the 1990s.

Earl Hamner's rural childhood, growing up in the unincorporated community of Schuyler, Virginia, provided the basis for many of the storylines of The Waltons. The setting of the series was referred to as Walton's Mountain. The closest town, Rockfish, is frequently mentioned on the show, as are the larger towns of Charlottesville and Scottsville.

A family, consisting of John and Olivia Walton, their seven children, and John's parents, Zebulon Tyler "Zeb" and Esther Walton, struggles to make a decent life during the Great Depression and World War II. The family's story is seen through the eyes of John-Boy, the eldest son and an aspiring journalist and novelist. John Walton and his father operate a lumber mill, with the Walton sons helping out in the business as they grow older. Occasional strangers needing temporary shelter for various reasons periodically stay with the hospitable Walton family. The mountain also sustains several colorful townsfolk, including the Baldwin sisters, two idle spinsters who distill moonshine which they naively and endearingly call "Papa's recipe"; general store owners/postmen Ike and Cora Beth Godsey (Cora Beth, a distant Walton cousin, fancies herself a refined socialite and can be compared to Mrs. Olsen in Little House on the Prairie), Sheriff Ep Bridges, Verdie Foster (a hardworking black woman), and Yancy Tucker (a Gooberesque figure with big plans but little motivation).