The series begins in 1867 and centers on a proper and wealthy female physician from Boston, Massachusetts, Michaela Quinn (Jane Seymour), familiarly known as “Dr. Mike”. She was born on February 15, 1833, in Boston and attended the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania. After graduation, she worked with her M.D. father until his death, when she sets out for the small wild west town of Colorado Springs, to set up her own practice.
She makes the difficult adjustment to life in Colorado, with the aid of rugged outdoorsman and friend to the Cheyenne, Byron Sully (Joe Lando) and a midwife named Charlotte Cooper (played by Diane Ladd). After Charlotte is bitten by a rattlesnake, she asks Michaela on her deathbed to look after her three children: Matthew (Chad Allen), Colleen (Erika Flores, later Jessica Bowman), and Brian (Shawn Toovey). Dr. Mike settles in Colorado Springs and adapts to her new life as a mother, with the children, while finding true love with Sully. She acts as a one-woman mission to convince the townspeople a female doctor can successfully practice medicine.
