The Utah Trail
1938 film by Albert Herman
The Utah Trail is a 1938 American Western film directed by Albert Herman. It was Tex Ritter's final film for Grand National Films. Despite the song and title, the film takes place on the Arizona/Mexico border and not Utah. The film is based on a short story that appeared in Ranch Romances magazine.
Plot
Tex is asked by the owner of a railroad to investigate a ghost train. Upon his arrival with his friends Ananias and Pee Wee, they find the railroad is run by the owner's daughter Sally after the owner's murder. Sally wants no part of Tex, posing as "The Pecos Kid", but Tex and his friends track down the train being used by rustlers.
“The Utah Trail” enters the record as 1938 film by Albert Herman. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Utah, Trail and film can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“The Utah Trail” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Utah, Trail and film provides the most credible route into that argument.
Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7771851. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1938.
Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “The Utah Trail” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.