Lone Pine Western Film Museum is a gold rush of fun for movie lovers

Driving through Lone Pine along Highway 395, I decided to stop and have a looky-loo at the Museum of Western Film History.

I am sort of a geek when it comes to museums. I like them. I like them so much that I try to stop by most as I pass when on the road, which is a lot.

“There, a museum,” I may shout to Laureen, or the empty passenger seat while driving through this little berg or that little berg. “We should stop.”

Laureen usually agrees and when she is not traveling with me, the passenger seat remains silent, which I take as, “Sure, let’s see what is in there.”

That is the only sort of geek I happen to be. No techie here - nope. If the television is acting funny while I am alone at home, I will wait until someone arrives to save me.

“Dad, how long have you been sitting here staring at the screen?” one of my daughters may ask when they find me in the recliner with three days of beard growth.

“I can’t exit Netflix,” I may utter. “I’m in the 25th Century with Picard.”

So, I decided to stop and check out this museum, which boasts it is similar to the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum located in the small village of Cooperstown in New York State.

The similarity, which I read about on their website, means they are the one and only true Western Film History Museum tied to the special location of the village of Lone Pine.

Lone Pine is a lovely town, approximately 210 miles northeast of Los Angeles or 2,700 miles southwest of Cooperstown, New York.

The town of Lone Pine is worth a visit all in itself. Anyone who has traveled north along Highway 395 on their way to Mammoth to ski, to Reno to gamble, or to Tonopah for paranormal fun, knows Lone Pine.

The town of a little over 1,500 citizens sits at 3,700 feet above sea level on the southeastern slopes of the Sierra Nevadas in Inyo County. It is home to the Alabama Hills and entryway to Mount Whitney, the highest mountain in the contiguous United States, towering at over 14,500 feet.

Contiguous is just a fancy way of saying, among the forty-eight states in the continental United States. In the state of Alaska, also a part of the United States for those who are checking, sits either Mount McKinley or Denali (one and the same) which tops over 20,000 feet.

The town received its name from a once lonely pine tree that sat at the mouth of the Lone Pine Canyon.

One item that pulls on the traveler's heartstrings is the monument dedicated to the folks who perished during the 1872 Owens Valley earthquake. At 2:30 in the morning on March 26th, a huge fault gave way and nearly wiped out the town which at the time contained a few hundred people. Twenty-seven residents perished and nearly 60 were seriously injured. It was later determined that the quake possibly measured anywhere from 7.4 to 7.9 on the Richter scale, which was one of the largest to ever strike California. It was similar to the monster that struck and destroyed most of San Francisco in 1906.

Each time I drive along that beautiful highway of 395 through the town of Lone Pine, I pull over and bow my head near the dedication monument for the victims who had gone to bed on March 25th of 1872 and never saw the sun rise again.

It is a very somber place to stand and reflect.

The museum is a historical journey of over 400 films and 100 television episodes that have been shot in the nearby Alabama Hills or other locales near Lone Pine or Owens Valley.

That is a lot of filming through the years starting with the 1920 blockbuster The Roundup, starring Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle, Buster Keaton, and Chief Red Foxx.

The list from that beginning is long and interesting. 3 Godfathers in 1948, Around the World in 80 Days in 1956, The Great Race in 1965, Transformer: Revenge of the Fallen in 2009, Terminal Velocity in 1996, and my favorite Hopalong Cassidy and the Sasquatch Kid - release date unknown at this time.

While I wandered the exterior of the museum, a film crew was all set up in the rear parking lot. Long tables with food were beneath popup tents, loads of sound equipment stacked around huge trailers, make-up folks discussing which tint went with what tint, guys and gals walking around looking rather Hollywoodish, and a middle-aged guy in a suit having his hair dyed.

I smiled and said hello to all I walked by. I was summarily ignored and decided to enter this western museum in Lone Pine.

Immediately I knew I should have stopped years earlier. The place is a cornucopia of film-making magic. Laureen, my lovely wife would have loved it. The empty passenger seat I had been currently traveling with could care less would be my guess.

One of the most intriguing exhibits is the 1928 RKO Studio camera car sitting like it just came out of the Ford production line. It is beautiful and all rigged out for a full camera crew to film any sort of moving action that was needed.

This vehicle has been used in multitudes of films including Steve McQueen’s movie, Bullitt, Bruce Willis and James Garner's film, Sunset, and Under the Rainbow starring Chevy Chase.

Meandering the multiple-room complex, which even has a movie theater, is a rewarding experience.

There is the history of Lone Pine mixed in with photographs, clothing, props, and anything else that will allow the visitor to fully understand the importance of filming has to do not only with this small town but the full cinematic industry.

An entire room is dedicated to the film series Iron Man, starring Tony Stark - I mean Robert Downey Jr. Easy to mix those two up.

Not far away in the Alabama Hills is where the Afghanistan ambush and escape took place and close by Olancha School was turned into a terrorist camp for the production.

Another exhibit is rather creepy, detailing the use of nearby locations to shoot the film series Tremors, starring Kevin Bacon. There are replicas of the Graboids, Shriekers for guests to view and get nauseous over, and a replica of the town the movie supposedly took place in Perfection, Nevada - a phony town.

It was perfect.

Of course, there are many items from earlier days of filming, such as a beautiful red Overland Stagecoach, supposedly used in the film, Rawhide. A dozen or more saddles hosted the rear ends of such legendary Western stars as Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Cesar Romero, John Wayne, and many more.

There are prop guns, prop boots, prop jackets, and all sorts of other props that are and were used to make magic come alive on the silver screen.

Walking through the myriad of vintage film cameras including a Simplex, RCA, and Panavision, all surrounded by metal circular canisters to keep the secrets of the day's shoot hidden and dry is a delight.

Photographs of legends are on every wall, as well as posters such as the one advertising Django, starring Jamie Foxx. One of the films, Gladiator, was autographed by the star Russell Crowe. Of course, John Wayne is lurking everywhere in life-sized cutouts depicting various Western films he starred in the Owens Valley.

A red director’s chair used by Quentin Tarantino is dead center with a description of what film he used the chair for and a sign telling the guest not to sit in it.

I looked around the room - I was alone at the moment.

Dresses worn by leading ladies, like the sparkly fringed blue dress that draped one of the most famous female Western actresses of all times, Dale Evans are tastefully shown around the museum.

A room describing the building of an entire Indian town in the Alabama Hills is on display for the filming of the 1938 film, Gunga Din starring Cary Grant.

Being a car guy, one of my favorite sights was the 1938 Plymouth Deluxe coupe used in the 1941 film, High Sierra starring Humphrey Bogart. It is shiny gray which oozes class and seems to be in pristine condition.

A couple of hours or more is needed to see all that is to be seen at this museum. Every minute is worth it, if the traveler has an interest in filmmaking or simply to learn how Lone Pine is so important to this billion-dollar industry.

This may have been my first visit, but not my last.

John can be contacted at beyersbyways@gmail.com

This article originally appeared on Visalia Times-Delta: Lone Pine Western Film Museum is a gold rush of fun