At Alabama Hills, you can walk in the footsteps of John Wayne, Robert Downey Jr., Kevin Bacon, Clint Eastwood, Roy Rogers, and dozens of other film and TV stars.
The 18,610-acre national scenic area, located about 2.5 miles west of the community of Lone Pine, California via Whitney Portal Road, is the place where more than 400 movies and countless television shows have been filmed since 1920.
The first known cinematic effort to use the hills as a backdrop was “The Roundup,” a comedian Fatty Arbuckle silent movie filmed in 1920. More recent films and shows that incorporated the area’s mountain/high desert scenery have included “Gladiator” (2000), “Iron Man” (2008), “Django Unchained” (2012), and “Man of Steel” (2013).
Of course, there is a reason Alabama Hills is such a popular location for directors and cinematographers: its location relatively close to Los Angeles and Hollywood and the fact it can look like so many other parts of the world.
In those hundreds of films, the hills have been a stand-in for the Middle East, frontier Arizona and New Mexico, ancient Rome, distant deserts, and other planets. With its unusual geology, consisting of various types of volcanic rock, Alabama Hills can be repurposed to serve as a substitute for places all over the world.
Geologists describe the distinctive boulders and rocks of the hills as weathered granite that has been shaped by wind and erosion. The result is a spectacular landscape filled with smooth, almost organic-looking boulders, arches, spires, and corridors, with the jagged peaks of the Sierra Nevada range in the distance.
The geologic features of the area, including the formation of the Sierra Nevada range, were shaped by uplifting that occurred 100 million years ago.
At about the 2.7-mile point from Lone Pine, the road forks, with Whitney Portal Road continuing directly west and Movie Road branching (on the right) in a slightly northwestern direction. The latter leads to the bulk of the best boulders and formations.
For example, at nearly the one-mile mark (from the fork), you can hike to the east of the road into what is called the Lone Ranger Canyon. This was the place where many of the adventures of the famed TV lawman were filmed in the 1950s. A little farther to the north of the canyon is where parts of the film, Django Unchained, were shot.
At the 1.5-mile mark (from the fork), you reach a sharp curve and to the left is the short Arch Loop trail, which leads to several of the area’s most prominent rock arches, including Mobius Arch.
Southwest of the trail are the sites where several other well-known movies were filmed, including “How the West Was Won” (1962), “Gunga Din” (1939), and “Tremors” (1990).
If you continue for several more miles on Movie Road, you will end up back on US 395.
For those with more time to explore, overnight camping is available at the Tuttle Creek Campground, with 80 sites, located south of the hills via Horseshoe Meadows Road.
As for why a cluster of picturesque rocks and boulders in eastern California is named Alabama Hills, according to historians, among the first non-Native American visitors to the area were prospectors who staked mining claims in the Owens Valley area.
Many were sympathetic to the Confederate side during the Civil War and named the hills after a Confederate warship, the Alabama, that had sunk a Union man-of-war ship, the Hatteras, off the coast of Texas in January 1863.
In more recent years, there have been efforts to rename the hills, which were known by the native Paiute people as “Payahuunadü,” meaning “the land of flowing water.” While the Bureau of Land Management is still pondering its next step, many believe the site should be renamed to its original Paiute name, rather than continue using a name with racist connotations.
For information on the name controversy, go to: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/california-eastern-sierras-reckon-with-racist-history-renaming-alabama-hills.
For more general information about the area, go to: www.blm.gov/visit/alabama-hills-national-scenic-area.
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