Movie Magic has Long Found a Home in Nevada

 

Valley of Fire's Silica Dome, where Star Trek's Captain Kirk died

   Hollywood filmmakers long ago discovered that Nevada made a pretty good stand-in for other places. From the earliest days of movies, the state has been used to represent everything from “the Old West” to ancient Israel to Mexico to an alien planet (several times).

   For example, one of the first films partially shot in Nevada was an epic 1923 silent western, “The Covered Wagon.” While not specifically set in Nevada, the film follows the travails of a group of settlers traveling west to reach Oregon and California.

   Scenes filmed in the Snake Valley, near Baker and Great Basin National Park in eastern Nevada, were used in the film to represent the rough, rugged, and wide-open western landscape that the settlers had to travel through on their way to a better life.

   Nevada’s role as a doppelganger for the Holy Land came in the 1965 movie, “The Greatest Story Ever Told.” This blockbuster Biblical epic about the life of Jesus, utilized Pyramid Lake in northern Nevada to represent the Sea of Galilee. The fishing town of Capurnaum was built on the shores of the lake for the film.

   As for Mexico, Nevada’s Valley of Fire State Park was a stand-in for the dry, mountainous parts of northern Mexico in another western, “The Professionals.”

   This 1966 film, which starred Lee Marvin, Burt Lancaster, Robert Ryan, and Woody Stroud, followed a group of four mercenaries hired to retrieve a kidnapped bride during the Mexican Revolution. Crumbling remains built for the film can still be found in the state park.

   Another western that found a backdrop at Valley of Fire was “The Ballad of Cable Hogue,” filmed in 1970. Starring Jason Robards and Stella Stephens, this western comedy about the closing of the western frontier involves the establishment of a settlement, Cable Springs, around a desert spring. The Cable Springs scenes were filmed at Valley of Fire.

   Because of its otherworldly-appearance, with its rich, red sandstone formations, Valley of Fire has also been a popular place for films set on other planets. In the 1990 science-fiction film, “Total Recall,” starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, all of the scenes presented as the surface of Mars were filmed at Valley of Fire.

   Four years later, the seventh Star Trek movie, “Star Trek: Generations,” was partially filmed at Valley of Fire. Scenes said to have been set on the planet Veridian III were shot near the park’s Silica Dome attraction.

   There, a metal prop bridge was erected, which was the site where one of Star Trek’s icons, Captain James Kirk, was murdered. The movie’s production crew donated the bridge to the park and it was installed along the Old Arrowhead Road Historic Trail.

   An excellent book about movies that have been filmed in the Silver State is Robin Holabird’s “Elvis, Marilyn, and the Space Aliens: Icons on Screen in Nevada,” which was published in 2017 by the University of Nevada Press and can be found in local bookstores or online book retailers, like Amazon.