Back Trail to the Reel West
Saddle up a time machine and return to the Golden Age of Westerns at the Alabama Hills.
By: Charley Engel 04/01/2009
My wife Dana and I rode into the heart of the Alabama Hills, a place I had been to thousands of times in my 50-plus years, even though I’d never set foot here before.
Situated west of Lone Pine, California, in the beautiful but stark Owens Valley, the Alabama Hills have been the setting for more than 350 movies, TV shows and commercials—many, many of them Westerns. Since 1920, when Fatty Arbuckle starred in The Round Up, the Hills helped define the image of the West. Its rounded, bouldery-shaped mounds of weathered granite formations were perfect for staging ambushes, hiding out from the law, holing up in a sandstorm or mining for gold.
Towering mountains also play a role in the mythos of the West. Whether used as a backdrop for westward migration, a barrier to be overcome in a howling snowstorm, rich timberlands to pillage or great pasturelands filled with cattle, the mighty Sierras, which soar over the Alabamas, are ever-present in hundreds of Westerns.
And what Western worth its salt was without a barren desert crossing? The dry lakebed of Owens Lake is custom-made to substitute for Death Valley (just over the Panamint Range), the Mojave Desert or anywhere else that called for a scene of utter emptiness.
Besides passing for all the Western states, the region around the Hills has stood in for distant lands as well—Kyber Pass in India, Old Mexico, Peru, Argentina, even outer space! Only about 200 miles from Hollywood, the sleepy town of Lone Pine offered the director a palette as big as all the outdoors, as weird as another planet or as desolate as the ends of the earth.
Trail History
The rounded boulders just west of town got their name in 1864 from prospectors during the great War Between the States. These men, Southern sympathizers, wanted to celebrate the victories of the Confederate cruiser, The Alabama, which caused some $60 million worth of damage to 60 Union vessels. The moniker for their placer mines was soon applied to the entire region of rocky outcroppings. Signs of mining still dot the area, mostly on the north end of the rocks.
The town itself was named for a solitary tree that grew at the mouth of Lone Pine Canyon in the mid-1800s. It was first a supply depot for miners. Civilization followed the argonauts, and farmers and merchants settled the place. The arrival of the Carson Colorado Railroad provided a permanent link with the outside world. Lone Pine was nearly leveled on March 26, 1872, during an earthquake, with an estimated Richter magnitude of 7.6 to 8, similar in intensity to that of the great San Francisco quake. Twenty-seven of approximately 250 residents died as the town’s many adobe buildings crumbled.
Lone Pine today is known as the “Gateway to Mt. Whitney,” which, at 14,405 feet above sea level, is the highest point in the lower 48 states. The Whitney Portal Road passes right by the Alabama Hills and ends at a campground and trailhead that leads to the famous peak.
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