Senator Ranse Stoddard returns to the city Shinbone in the Wild West to go to the funeral of his friend, Tom Doniphon. To a journalist, who's wondering what the senator is doing in Shinbone, he tells how his career started as "the man who shot Liberty Valance". As a lawyer he went to Shinbone, where he met his wife Hallie and Tom Doniphon. He taught the people there to read and write. Then he met the greatest bandit of the region, Liberty Valance....
