California Gold Country Western Locations
From Iverson Ranch to Lone Pine, Moab to Kanab, Corriganville to Pioneertown, I love visiting Western movie locations!
This spring a road trip took us to California’s “Gold Country.”
We spent a day in the little towns of Sonora — its famous “red church” is seen above — Columbia, and Jamestown.
Western movies were filmed all over the area, and Jamestown and Columbia have particularly interesting movie locations to visit.
Railtown 1897 State Historic Park, a frequently used movie location since the 1920s, is located in Jamestown and welcomes visitors.
Railtown is home to the Sierra Railway…
…and its famous Engine No. 3, which is said to be “the most frequently filmed locomotive in the world.” (That’s my husband waving at the camera.)
Although the engine is sometimes “dressed” for specific periods, its familiar No. 3 can be spotted in many films. Just the other day my husband was watching a Western and called me in for a look at Engine No. 3! It’s pictured on these park brochures.
There’s a small museum which details some of the railroad’s movie history.
Among the many films shot at Railtown were The Virginian (1929), Sierra Passage (1950), The Cimarron Kid (1952), Kansas Pacific (1953), The Return of Jack Slade (1955), The Big Land (1957), Man of the West (1958), and The Long Riders (1980). That list is just a small handful of the movie and TV titles shot there over nearly a century.
The museum includes a poster for one of the most famous movies filmed at Railtown, High Noon (1952).
There’s a dusty roundhouse which holds several more train engines and passenger cars.
We took a Sierra Railway train trip which lasted a little under an hour…
…and saw scenery which has appeared in countless Westerns!
From Railtown we went on to nearby Columbia State Historic Park. Columbia was a Gold Rush town whose authentic Western streets later appeared in many movies and TV shows.
That’s my husband Doug beginning our exploration of Columbia; he’s holding a sheaf of screen shots he put together from movies filmed in the town.
There’s plenty of Western atmosphere in town, including a stagecoach.
Using the screenshots my husband had prepared, we were able to find Columbia locations for a handful of movies, including the Hopalong Cassidy film Rustlers’ Valley (1937) and the Randolph Scott film Rage at Dawn (1955). Rage at Dawn also filmed a robbery sequence on the Sierra Railway.
Below are a couple of the locations we found for Rustlers’ Valley. Hoppy was here!
These are some of the buildings we found which appear in Rage at Dawn. I’ve included our rough-looking screenshots for comparison.
This was my first visit to this part of the state, and I hope there will be many more such trips in the future.
The photographs accompanying this article are from the author’s personal collection.
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– Laura Grieve for Classic Movie Hub
Laura can be found at her blog, Laura’s Miscellaneous Musings, where she’s been writing about movies since 2005, and on Twitter at @LaurasMiscMovie. A lifelong film fan, Laura loves the classics including Disney, Film Noir, Musicals, and Westerns. She regularly covers Southern California classic film festivals. Laura will scribe on all things western at the ‘Western RoundUp’ for CMH.
