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Alabama Hills Recreation Area
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- Good for Kids:
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7 reviews for Alabama Hills Recreation Area
Along Whitney Portal Road, you might see a street sign that reads 'Movie Road'. What lies at the end of Movie Road is worth the side trip. When you do reach the end of the road, there's a parking lot and beautiful desolation. If you don't catch a small foot high sign you might not see that there's a destination walking trail. Don't turn that car around.
The trail will only take about five minutes to reach the Alabama Hills Arch. I've been on an arch hunt of late and this arch is quite stunning. The A.H.A. doesn't have the grand scale of Delicate Arch and isn't as precarious as Delicate Arch, but it's got a backdrop that is second to none. When positioned precisely, you can snap a picture of the arch with Mount Whitney in the background (http://www.yelp.com/bi...).
There are few more arches located in the Alabama Hills and they're fun to find. They're of all shapes and sizes. If you're not careful, you might end up sitting on one. The area is a nice place to take in the quiet and solitude.... but it's pretty damn hot out there.
In terms of the latest movies shot out there: Iron Man, Transformers 2
I spent my childhood watching cowboys and Indians, in old films showing on afternoon TV and in original TV shows from the early 50's on. It appears that nearly every Western Star that ever came out of Hollywood made a movie or TV show on location here--Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, Gene Autry, Lash La Rue, Hopalong Cassidy, John Wayne, Randolph Scott, Cisco Kid, Gabby Hayes, Andy Devine, the Lone Ranger. More recently, all three Tremors movies, Iron Man, and the Mel Gibson Maverick movie had portions filmed in the Alabama Hills area just outside of town. Humphrey Bogart's Treasure of Sierra Madre and Cary Grant's Gunga Din had scenes here as well.
In town you can pick up a pamphlet with a route thru the Aalabama Hills telling where the scenes from various movies were filmed. Beware it is a gravel road, very bumpy in places, but worth the derive I thought. I think my husband driving got a little bored by the end as we skipped a few places and he didn't show as much enthusiasm as I felt. But then he was never a movie buff like my brother and i were.
Every year In mid-October they hold a Film Festival in town celebrating their history with famous guest including some of the above names before they passed away.
Wow. Just wow. I guess it depends on what you find beautiful or interesting, but I loved this place. It didn't feel real. It was like driving into a movie set (duh!), but one that was made by man, not by mother nature. The further we drove in, the more impressive it became. We were short on time and almost didn't bother since we didn't have the movie key-route-map thingy with us, but I am so glad we went. It was worth it. I am just astounded at how few people know about or come through here and that one can just go in and drive around all willy nilly and there's not a need for someone to be onsite to staff/police the visitors. Being from the bay area I am NOT used to the freedoms in the eastern sierra's and it is soooo refreshing!
I'm thinking about offering to staff an 24 hour onsite visitor center so I can live there! ;-) ...think BLM will take me up on it?!
We stopped here on the way out to Death Valley and I actually think I enjoyed it more than the Death Valley trip. We took our 4WD vehicle off road and went out onto some of the less traveled trails. You can weave in and out of the neat rock formations for hours.
Alabama Hills is famous for being the location where hundreds of westerns were filmed. If you stop at the motel on the edge of town they have an info sheet for free that shows the major movie set locations and even gives you a guide to different rocks that people think look like things. I actually thought that it was more fun exploring the rock formations without following the guide.
Yoga Berra once said, "It's like deja vu all over again!"
You'll recognize almost every rock formation from some movie you have seen over the years. You half expect to see stampeding herds of cattle, "good" guys chasing "bad guys" on horseback with clouds of dust filling the air. I swear I could smell some pork n' beans being cooked on some nearby chuck wagon. I could also swear I saw Kevin Bacon trying to blow up a Dravoid!
Right outside of the town of Lone Pine is the Alabama Hills Recreation Area. For almost 100 years this area has served as backdrop of hundreds of western movies (starring Tom Mix, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, the Lone Ranger, Hop along Cassidy, John Wayne; epic movies (Gunga Din with Cary Grant, How the West Was Won); classics like High Sierra (with Humphrey Bogart; tv shows (Bonanza, Twilight Zone episodes); many other B movies; and way too many macho truck commercials.
See my pix.
The Alabama Hills got its name from Southern rebels in the 1860's for the Confederate ship, Alabama, which sunk 64 Union ships (gulp).
Thankfully there aren't any Southern rebels, waylaid cowboys, maniacal movie directors, stampeding cattle or Dravoids to worry about anymore.
There are occasional dune bikes but they stick to the roads.
Spectacular landscape, as seen in many western movies, surrounded by high mountains of pine on one side, and the Martian mountains of Death Valley on the other. You can see/climb Mt Whitney from here (highest mountain in the contiguous US).
From the BLM website:
The rounded, weathered contours of the Alabama's, form a sharp contrast between the crisply sculptured ridges of the Sierra. ..shaped by the same cataclysmic uplifting 100 million years ago ..These were the tools that sculpted the outstanding formations of weathered granite in the Alabama's.
The outstanding features and environment of the Alabama Hills have attracted movie makers, commercial companies and tourists from all over the world.
While enjoying the scenic and recreational values of the Alabama Hills, hikers, rock climbers and sightseers should use the utmost caution at all times. The few remaining mine shafts and tunnels in the general area should be avoided because of the extreme hazards they represent.
One of the more accessible groups of natural rock formations in Southern California. Just 2.5 miles from Main Street in Lone Pine, a large number can be viewed on Movie Road, and viewed from you r car, or with just a short, easy walk. The more adventurous can take longer walks, and climb for additional vantage points. Maps to various movie locations are available from the Lone Pine movie museum, and elsewhere in town. I should point out that the rock formations are not restricted to Movie Rd., and I recommend visiting another Gunga Din movie locations (with a marker for easy identification) a short ways from the Movie Rd. heading south just a 1/4 mile south on Horseshoe Meadow Road, on the east side. After this visit continue south on Horseshoe Meadow to Sunset Dr., then back North again via Turtle Creek Rd. for many more variations of the theme.
