Jun 15 2007

Took a great roadtrip last weekend, stopped off at the Salton Sea for a few days (of course!) and then spent a great night up in Pioneertown outside of Yucca Valley. I then get home with a boatload of photos and find out I'm out of disk space! So, the last few days have been spent getting more storage setup instead of working on some shots I'm pretty happy with. But, all is good now. I'll write more on the road trip later.

Pioneertown is an old movie set that has been saved and turned in to a nice stop on the road with a few bars, restaurant, and motel.

One of the saved buildings is a bar/bowling alley where movie stars and starlets used to unwind after a long day shooting films. The walls contain murals outlining the history of Pioneertown and it's movie past.

From the Pioneertown website

Pioneertown was built in 1946 as a movie set for western movies, including the movies of Gene Autry, The Cisco Kid, with Duncan Renaldo, Annie Oakley with Gail Davis, Judge Roy Bean with Edgar Buchanan, Range Rider with Jock O. Mahoney, and Buffalo Bill Jr. with Dick Jones. The movie set was to provide a place for the actors to live, and have their homes used as part of a movie set. Some of the original investors in the town were Roy Rogers, who also built the Pioneer Bowl, Sons of the Pioneers, which the town was named after, Dick Curtis who was a professional villian in old movies, Bud Abbott, Russell Hayden, who played Lucky on the Hoppalong Cassidy series, Louella Parsons the Hollywood gossip columnist and Philip N. Krasne: The Man Who Saved Pioneertown.

Pioneertown, California
June 2007