The Waltons is an American historical drama television series about a family in rural mountainous Western Virginia of the Appalachian/Blue Ridge Mountains chain, during the economic hardships and mass unemployment of the Great Depression in the 1930s and the subsequent United States home front during World War II in the 1940s. It was created by screenwriter and author Earl Hamner Jr., based on his 1961 book Spencer's Mountain. The Waltons aired from September 14, 1972, to June 4, 1981, and took place in the fictional Walton's Mountain, Virginia.