The Western Frontier is disappearing as encroaching civilization and the industrial age meet in the late 1880s. Nowhere is the clash of the old and new more evident than in law enforcement. With the advent of fingerprinting photography and other forensic techniques, modern police investigation is born. Peacemakers revolves around a grizzled, middle-aged federal marshal and his team of "scientists," including a cocky Pinkerton agent with a degree from Yale and a wagonload of forensic equipment, and a strong-minded  medical student who has returned home to run the family undertaking business.