Lone Pine Film History Museum

Folks living in remote places always seem super friendly and helpful. Take Barbara, the receptionist here at Boulder Creek RV Resort, whom we asked whether she knew of a rental car company nearby. There is none but she said that she would be happy to drive us the four miles into town and regularly does that for folks who do not tow. In fact, all of the staff here regularly does that. Wow!

That is how we found ourselves at the Lone Pine Film History Museum this afternoon, thanks to Barbara.
But first, she gave us the quick car-tour of the little town of Lone Pine, which spans no more than a few blocks.  That's it. Don't blink or you will miss it.

Route 395 goes right through the center of Lone Pine,
population 2,035, elevation 3,727 ft (1136 m)

There is a Mc Donald's.  I liked their sign post:

in keeping with the town's movie set fame, the sign has
Western saloon doors

Next she drove us to her home (one street over) to show us the view from her back yard. Here is what she gazes at every day.

the craggy spines that look like fingers (on the right above the tall tree) are Mt Whitney (14, 508 ft), tallest peak in the lower 48, and above the brown hill on the left  is Lone Pine Peak (12,949 ft)... now THAT is a house with a view! 

The museum was interesting. Who would have imagined that hundreds of westerns and several sci-fi movies were shot right here in the Alabama Hills of Lone Pine, with the grand towering Sierras serving as a backdrop. The first feature film shot entirely on location at Lone Pine was The Round-up, a 1920 silent Western starring Fatty Arbuckle. Thirty years later, the same location served as the backdrop in over 400 movies, mostly Westerns, 100 television episodes, and countless commercials.

A few titles I recognized are The Lone Ranger, How the West Was Won, The Charge of the Light Brigade, and Gunga Din. The rest of the movies we can view at leisure, well into our dotage (a list of which you can find here: http://www.lonepinefilmhistorymuseum.org/index.php?option=com_joodb&view=catalog&Itemid=31).

The Alabama Hills and the spectacular Sierra Nevadas also served as the backdrop for movies about other exotic places like the Himalayas, the Gobi Desert, the Arabian Desert, and even Africa for two Tarzan movies. Several other genre were also filmed here, including a couple of Star Trek movies, Gladiator and Dinosaur.

We watched the documentary movie, then explored the various exhibits, which consisted of posters and some costumes and props. For Lone Ranger and Hop-along Cassidy fans, there was a lot of memorabilia from that era.

the Lone Ranger and Tonto

the Singing Cowboys of Western fame

I bumped into this famous cowboy ;)

This quilt and a couple of pillows feature many of the stars' names and a center panel of the Alabama Hills where the movies were shot.

The promised winds had picked up and were howling all around us, rattling the building doors at times with the higher gusts. While we were waiting for Barbara to pick us up, there were several more gusts and while Michael tried to take a photo, I could barely hang on to my jacket.

The cloud formations were interesting: