Family Friendly Getaway: Lone Pine Museum of Western Film History

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Nestled along the eastern Sierra Nevada mountains, Lone Pine has served as a destination for Hollywood filmmakers seeking exotic locations.

The Museum of Western Film History in Lone Pine celebrates the more than 500 films that have been shot throughout the area of this high desert town over the last 100 years.

The Beverly and Jim Rogers Lone Pine Western Film History Museum celebrates Hollywood’s history in the region. The museum, charts the mostly western films shot in and around Lone Pine. Starting with silent western with stars like Tom Mix, Ken Maynard and Hoot Gibson to big screen epics featuring the likes of John Wayne to singing cowboy Gene Autry westerns to more recent movies such as Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained.

The museum traces the history of the western genre with film clips, movie posters, props, photos, and array of movie cameras, projectors and Hollywood artifacts. Museum visitors are encouraged to tour the galleries and visit the actual locations not far in the Alabama Hills just west of the museum.

Exhibits reflect the museum’s extensive collection and highlights many famous western characters and actors. The museum has an extensive collection of mementos from early silent films, classic westerns, TV shows and commercials. With exhibits that feature western themed memorabilia, with costumes, hats, boots and guns galore.

There are exhibits honoring the singing cowboys with tributes to stars Gene Autry, Roy Rogers and Tex Ritter. A beautifully restored stagecoach is set in the middle of the museum floor. Along side the medical wagon used in Django Unchained.

As westerns faded in popularity other popular movie were filmed in the area such as Tremors, Gladiator, Iron Man and Star Trek Generations. Non-western memorabilia from films like the cult - classic Tremors, including a giant worm that terrorized the townspeople of Perfection.

The first film shot on location in Lone Pine was The Round-Up, a 1919 silent Western starring Fatty Arbuckle as Sheriff Slim Hover in his first feature film. For the next 100 years the area’s interesting geological formations of the Alabama Hill just below the peak of Mt. Whitney the tallest mountain in the continental United States, provided an epic landscape that has served as a giant backlot for some of Hollywood’s most famous movies.

There are tours available with knowledgeable and entertaining guides that can provide you a custom tour to the film locations you would like to visit.

The Museum of Western Film History can also provide information and maps to help you do a self-guided tour. With directions and a good eye you can find the locations of many classic movies. With a short walk on foot and you can by lining up the background mountains with nearby rock formations find the exact shooting location.

Just a few miles outside of Lone Pine the Alabama Hills are a formation of rounded rocks and eroded hills set at the base of the jagged peaks of the Sierra Nevada mountains.

This contrast with the high Sierras, the Alabama Hills and the dusty desert creates a unique landscape. There are few places in the world that look like this and is the reason that it attracted Hollywood.

Hundreds of motion pictures and thousands of commercials and TV shows have used this dramatic panorama as a stand in for different locations from around the world. Representing exotic location from the Himalayas to the Arabian Desert or the surface of Mars.

At its peak, in the 1930s to the 1950s at least one movie was shot each month in Lone Pine.

In 1939, RKO Pictures shot the classic adventure Gunga Din with the Alabama Hills as a convincing stand-in for northern India, with the Sierras posing as the Himalayas in the background. The Charge of the Light Brigade starring Errol Flynn was also photographed in the Alabama Hills.

In 1951, 20th Century Fox staged a scene among the rocks for its production of Rawhide staring Tyrone Power and Susan Hayward. The grave site location still has the round boulder on the ground seen in the graveside scene.

For the epic tale of American westward expansion How the West Was Won used the Alabama Hills location. The star-studded cast raced across the landscape along with 630 horses, 150 mules, and 107 wagons.

During the heyday of the television westerns in the 1950s and 60s, Bonanza, The Lone Ranger, and Have Gun Will Travel all shot scenes in the Alabama Hills.

Lone Pine where dusty desert terrain and Alpine peaks collide is still a go to location for Hollywood features including Iron Man and Star Trek.

If you are a movie fan, or nature lover or just into spectacle vitas you’ll love this destination. Visit the Museum of Western Film History where on-going exhibits and Hollywood memorabilia provide insight into the old and new legends from the silent screen to today’s blockbusters.

Music: "A Heard of Wild Mustangs"