The first weekend in October my friend Sonja and I did something we had never before contemplated doing—we attended a cowboy film festival in Lone Pine, California. We aren't particularly crazy about old horse operas, but we are mad about the place where they were filmed.
Beginning in 1920 hundreds of cowboy and adventure films have been shot at the Alabama Hills, about a five-minute drive along Whitney Portal Road west of Lone Pine, right at the foot of the highest peaks of the Sierra Nevada and just off US Highway 395. The geology of the area is simply spectacular—a jumble of red and orange rocks of myriad shapes and angles. The jagged summit of Mt. Whitney, elevation 14, 495 feet, provides a dramatic background.
The first morning of the festival we spent four hours wandering along Movie Road, investigating the narrow, twisting paths, marveling at the strange geometry, clicking our cameras, and gathering inspiration for our weavings and paintings. This scenery has stood for the classic western landscape of our imagination, as well as the Himalayas of northern India, the plains of Spain, and the deserts of Arabia. My favorite films shot here are the stories set in India—The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (#1 on my list), Gunga Din, King of the Khyber Rifles, products of the 1930s, '40s, and '50s. Scenes from High Sierra (Humphrey Bogart), The Adventures of Marco Polo (Gary Cooper), A Star is Born (the Janet Gaynor version), and Star Trek Generations use these rocks as background. More recently Tremors, Gladiator, Transformers, and Iron Man were shot here. And we can't forget the current Subaru and Dodge television commercials.
But what the Alabama Hills are mostly known for are the oaters starring Tom Mix, Randolph Scott, John Wayne, Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Alan Ladd, Tim Holt, et cetera, et cetera. This year the twenty-second annual film festival celebrated this wealth of movie history.
We skipped the showings of classic westerns in favor of the outdoor experience, and in the afternoon we joined a bus tour to the sites where several Tyrone Power films were shot. Stops included the boulders of the Pony Express relay station in Rawhide, the desert plain viewed by the Mormons in Brigham Young, and the mountain road ascended by British soldiers in King of the Khyber Rifles.
When not on location we strolled through the Museum of Lone Pine Film History with its extensive collection of movie posters, costumes, props, vintage automobiles, stagecoaches, and even one of the Tremors worms. We attended a lecture on the Foley art of sound production and we watched a crew of stunt men and women demonstrate fights and falls in the high school gym. But our first love remains the rocks and the mountains behind them, John Muir's Range of Light.
Lone Pine motels were full so we stayed 60 miles to the north in Bishop, where there was a greater choice of restaurants and the largest grocery store, Von's, in about 300 miles. One night we had delicious Mexican food at La Casita and the next night we ate at Jack's, known for its down-home food and great service. On Saturday the entire town of Bishop bloomed with yellow ribbons to honor America's service men and women.
The drive between Bishop and Lone Pine took us through some of the most fascinating geology of the eastern Sierra—fields of black basalt blocks and long sloping flows of volcanic ash, as well as many glacial moraines that had been pushed out in front of Sierra glaciers millions of years ago. We caught sight of a herd of elk right by the four-lane highway. Bright yellow rabbitbrush and gray-green sagebrush covered the valley floor. Dark rivers of pines trickled down from the mountaintops between wide slashes of new snow.
On our way home we stopped in early morning light at Mono Lake and again got drawn in by the photo opportunities among the tufa formations.
Strange how only one out of the combined collection of our friends has ever heard of the Alabama Hills. Strange how the turnoff to the Hills is marked by nothing more than a small street sign in Lone Pine. Strange how 395 is practically empty of traffic when there is so much inviting the visitor to explore the eastern side of the Sierra: hiking trails, trout fishing par excellence, the World War II Japanese internment camp now a National Historical Monument, Mono Lake and its visitor center in Lee Vining, the Bodie ghost town, a living course in advanced geology, the epic tale of the great Los Angeles theft of northern California's water (aqueducts and pipelines visible all along the route), and unending photo ops. So, if you can't make it to next year's film festival, Sonja and I hope you will go for the many other attractions.
