23-year-old John Wayne in his first leading role as young scout Breck Coleman leading a wagon train along the dangerous trail to Oregon as he tries to get the affection of the beautiful pioneer Ruth Cameron and plans his revenge on the harsh scoundrels who murdered a friend of his in the past.

Directed by Raoul Walsh, The Big Trail was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant,” citing “the majestic sweep provided by the experimental 70mm Grandeur wide-screen process used in filming.”

About the restored 1930 70mm Grandeur Version:
Nearly a quarter-century before CinemaScope and the great 70mm roadshow epics of the 1950s and ’60s, director Raoul Walsh and Fox Film Corporation attempted something astonishing with The Big Trail: an epic Western photographed in the experimental 70mm Fox Grandeur widescreen process. Made simultaneously in conventional 35mm and Grandeur, the two versions are actually different photographic presentations, with some scenes staged or photographed separately. Grandeur’s approximately 2:1 image allowed Walsh and cinematographer Arthur Edeson to fill the enormous frame with wagon trains, cattle, mountains, deserts and hundreds of performers, creating compositions that can look decades ahead of their time. The Grandeur edition premiered at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles and New York’s Roxy Theatre, but the expense of converting theaters—coming just after the costly transition to sound and at the beginning of the Depression—helped doom the format. The 70mm version subsequently became a rarity until the Museum of Modern Art undertook its preservation.