ABOUT
ARTICLES
DIRECTIONS
DOCUMENTS
EVENTS
FESTIVAL
HOURS
MEMBERSHIP
NEWS
TICKETS
WMDB
 
 Part 2  Part 3

 A living museum -- that's what visitors call our Alabama Hills because to visit them is to revisit your past. You see those rocks and you remember the movies of a lifetime. It was here that all the great British-Army-in-India movies were made. This is where the "Lone Ranger" ambush was first filmed, this is where Roy Rogers first found Trigger and Tom Mix found Tony, Hollywood-style. Errol Flynn lead a patrol right over there, the cops chased Bogart on that road there! Dreams came to life here and a million memories remain.

 Hollywood first came on location in Lone Pine in 1920, using our unique scenery in more than 300 feature films since then. Actually the Alabama Hills, the Sierra Nevadas and the Owens Valley are still being used in movies and countless car commercials. Most recently, scenes for the Academy Award-winning "Gladiator", Disney's "Dinosaur", "G.I. Jane" with Demi Moore, "Maverick" with Mel Gibson and "The Shadow" with Alec Baldwin were shot in the Alabama Hills. And for good reason. The natural scenery remains unspoiled and unchanged since that first film in 1920, a silent Western for Paramount called "The Round Up" with Fatty Arbuckle

 And as you slowly drive those dirt roads out there -- roads made by movie companies years ago to move equipment about -- you're riding were John Wayne rode. And Hoot Gibson and Buck Jone and Ken Maynard. And Gene and Roy and Hoppy.

 Yes, just off Movie Road is the Movie Flats area where so many of our cowboy heroes filmed those exciting chase scenes in reel after reel of Saturday matinees. But it wasn't just Gene Autry, Roy Rogers and Hopalong Cassidy who helped immortalize Lone Pine. Other familiar names worked here too: Clint Eastwood, Jack Palance, Cary Grant, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Tyrone Power, Susan Hayward, Gregory Peck, Spencer Tracy, Alan Ladd, Tony Curtis, Jack Lemon and Natilie Wood, just to name a few.

  For many years, Russell Spainhower's Anchor Ranch just south of Lone Pine provided the movie-makers with horses and cattle, wagons, a mission-hacienda set and a Western street called "Anchorville". None of the old wooden sets are left.