Movie ranch
To solve this problem, many movie studios purchased large tracts of undeveloped rural land, in many cases existing ranches, that were located closer to Hollywood.
As a result of post-war (WWII) era suburban development, property values and taxes on land increased, even as fewer large parcels were available to the studios.
During this time, Victor Panek contacted his neighbors in Apache Junction, Mr. and Mrs. J.K. Hutchens, to suggest the idea of building a dedicated studio in the Superstition area.
Construction on the Apacheland Studio soundstage and adjacent "western town" set began on February 12, 1959, by Superstition Mountain Enterprises and associates.
[4] By June 1960, Apacheland was available for use by production companies and its first TV western Have Gun, Will Travel was filmed in November 1960, along with its first full-length movie The Purple Hills.
Actors such as Elvis Presley, Jason Robards, Stella Stevens, Ronald Reagan, and Audie Murphy filmed many other western television shows and movies in Apacheland and the surrounding area, such as Gambler II, Death Valley Days, Charro!, and The Ballad of Cable Hogue.
[8] Corrigan opened portions of his vast movie ranch to the public in 1949 on weekends to explore such themed sets as a rustic western town, Mexican village, western ranch, outlaw hide-out shacks, cavalry fort, Corsican village, English hunting lodge, country schoolhouse, rodeo arena, mine-shaft, wooded lake, and interesting rock formations.
[14] Buster Keaton's Three Ages (1923), Herman Brix's Hawk of the Wilderness (1938), Laurel and Hardy's The Flying Deuces (1939), and John Wayne's The Fighting Seabees (1944) are just a handful of the productions that were filmed on the ranch.
The rocky terrain and narrow, winding roads frequently turned up in Republic serials of the 1940s and were prominently featured in chases and shootouts throughout the golden era of action B-Westerns in the 1930s and 1940s.
The waning popularity of the Western genre and the decline of the B-movie coincided with the arrival of the freeway, which opened in 1967, and greater development pressure, signaling the end for Iverson as a successful movie ranch.
The Upper Iverson is also no longer open to the public, as it is now a gated community consisting of high-end estates along with additional condominiums and an apartment building.
[17] This section includes the famous "Garden of the Gods" on the west side of Red Mesa, in which many rock formations seen in countless old movies and TV shows are accessible to the public.
[19][18] The location of the ranch was in the northwest corner of Chatsworth, along the western side of Topanga Canyon Boulevard where it currently intersects with the Simi Valley Freeway.
The studio could be reached from Hollywood by using the Pacific Electric railway services, by rail to The Oak Crest Station and then Vehicle by way todays Barham Blvd.
[23] This area is noted for a filming location history of many important movies, including, The Thundering Herd (Famous Players–Lasky Co. 1925), Gone with the Wind (Selznick 1939) and They Died with Their Boots On, "Santa Fe Trail" (Warner Bros. 1940), and many others.
[34][37] In 1927, Paramount Studios purchased a 2,700-acre (11 km2) ranch on Medea Creek in the Santa Monica Mountains near Agoura Hills, between Malibu and the Conejo Valley.
Western town sets posed as Tombstone, Arizona, and Dodge City, Kansas, as well as Tom Sawyer's Missouri, 13th-century China, and many other locales and eras around the world.
In addition to Cimarron scenery, RKO continued to create a vast array of diverse sets for their ever-expanding movie ranch, included a New York City avenue, brownstone street, English row houses, slum district, small town square, residential neighborhood, three working train depots, mansion estate, New England farm, western ranch, a mammoth medieval City of Paris, European marketplace, Russian village, Yukon mining camp, ocean tank with sky backdrop, Moorish casbah, Mexican outpost, Sahara Desert fort, plaster mountain range diorama, and a football field sized United States map which Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers danced across in The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (1939).
(1932), King Kong (1933), Of Human Bondage (1934), Becky Sharp (1935), Walking on Air (1936), Stage Door (1937), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), Kitty Foyle (1940), Citizen Kane (1941), Cat People (1942), Murder, My Sweet (1944), Dick Tracy film noir series (1945-1947), It's a Wonderful Life (1946) (Bedford Falls),They Live by Night (1948), and many more.
It was named for the Gold discovery by Francisco Lopez in the wild onion roots under the "Oak of the Golden Dream", in present-day Placerita Canyon State Park.
The Walt Disney Company worked closely with the State of California when a portion of the western border of the ranch was purchased for the Antelope Valley Freeway.
Many of the television Westerns used the ranch, including Bonanza, Gunsmoke, Zorro, The Monroes, How the West Was Won, Dundee and the Culhane, The Big Valley and Have Gun – Will Travel.
[68] An episode of the original Star Trek series, "A Private Little War" (1968), was partly shot at Bell Ranch's Box Canyon using it to stand in for an alien world.
Some of the past television episodes and productions filmed there include: Rawhide, Gunsmoke, Bonanza, Little House on the Prairie, Highway to Heaven, Father Murphy, The Thorn Birds, Jericho and Carnivàle.
As of 2011[update], the ranch's web site indicated that it was still available as a filming location, "with rolling hills and great vistas and .. with secluded canyons, undulating valleys and a grand mesa.
Credits in the past few years include "The Office", "Saving Mr. Banks", "Captain America", "Django Unchained", "Agents of SHIELD", "Hail Caesar", "The Revenant" Formerly the estate of Charles Chaplin, the 160-acre (65 ha) ranch, located in Calabasas, was purchased by Jack Ingram in 1944 from James Newill and Dave O'Brien, who had purchased the goat ranch in order to avoid the draft during World War II.
Ingram purchased a bulldozer, and with the help of his friends including actors Pierce Lyden and Kenne Duncan built a western town of two streets on the site.
[73] A number of Westerns and early television shows were filmed in Pioneertown, including The Cisco Kid and Edgar Buchanan's Judge Roy Bean.
Backing up to 50 acres (200,000 m2) of land, this town features a church that seats 50 people, a mercantile, bank, saloon, livery, jail, costumes, and horses.
Productions that have done some filming at the Rancho Deluxe studio include "SWAT", "Timeless", "LA to Vegas", "MasterChef", and seasons one and two of HBO's "Westworld".
