On the Trail of Disney -- A Guide to Locations with Disney Connections
Page 2 of 3
This building, used in The Absent Minded
Professor, was once covered with ivy, but apparently has undergone renovation and the
ivy removed.
From the 10 Freeway, east or west, exit at South Indian Hills Blvd. and go north to W. 6th Street and make a right. This street will take you right to the campus area. To make a day trip of it, there is a Botanic Garden if you keep going north on S. Indian Hills Blvd. past W. 6th Street. Also in the general vicinity, old downtown Pomona is interesting to visit. There are lots of quaint old buildings and many antique stores, one of which has several cases of Disney collectible stuff.
Walt Disney's concern that all of the great old location sites, including the location ranches owned by several of the Hollywood studios, would someday succumb to development has come to pass for the most part today. Happily, a handful of these places have been saved as parks. Most of these areas aren't used much for filming anymore, but are available for city dwellers to enjoy nature and the out-of-doors.
These buttes at Wildwood Park in Thousand Oaks
have been seen in countless old Western movies and TV shows.
The area that is now Wildwood Park in Thousand Oaks was used in over 300 movies and TV shows, especially Westerns, over the years. You might recognize its distinctive bluffs, seen in countless old Westerns. The 1959 Cinemascope Disney film Westward Ho the Wagons, used the area, which was then part of what was called Conejo Ranch. A few scenes for the third installment of the Davy Crockett series, Davy Crockett at the Alamo, were also done on part of the old Conejo Ranch. In the early 1970's, part of the area was preserved as parkland and was named Wildwood Park. Much of the remainder of the area has been developed over the years.
From the Ventura Freeway in Thousand Oaks, exit Lynn Road and go north 2.2 miles to Avenida de los Arboles. Follow it to the park entrance. There are no entrance fees. There are picnic areas, and a number of scenic trails, most of them moderate to easy to walk.
The last place is one that is near and dear to my heart. It has been a favorite "hangout" of mine since I moved to Southern California in 1982. I call it "my other Disneyland", and it is another hobby of mine.
Paramount Ranch, as the name implies, was a location ranch for the Paramount Studios from the 1920's through the mid-1940's. Portions of many well-known movies were done there during these years, and there were a number of standing sets, including European villages, 1880's San Francisco, Colonial New England towns, a nice Western town, and a number of other sets. All of the sets were dismantled after the Studio sold the property in the mid-'40's. Over the years, the original acreage was subdivided and sold off in parcels. The acreage that comprises the present day Paramount Ranch park changed hands a number of times through the years before the National Park Service acquired it and opened it to the public as a park in 1980.
The man who owned the property in the 1950's had incorporated some of the surviving rustic old support buildings from the Paramount Studios days into a small Western town that he built with the intent to rent out for filming for TV Westerns, which were proliferating at the time. Indeed, many of the popular Western TV shows of the day used the site for filming on occasion.
Later owners used the ranch for a variety of public activities, and built a racetrack for car racing. The ranch continued to be used for occasional filming during the 1960's and 1970's for scenes for TV shows and low-budget movies.
Some of you long-time locals may also remember that the Renaissance Pleasure Faire used to be held on adjacent property until the 1980’s, when it was forced to move due to pending development. That site, which had also been one of the parcels of the original Paramount Studios acreage, has since become part of the park.
The Paramount Ranch Western town set, seen here
during Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman production, still sees a lot of filming action.
Many buildings have interiors that can be used for filming, while some are just facades.
These days, in addition to public day use and several annual events and festivals, the National Park Service still allows filming to be done there. In the early 1980’s sets representing Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Egypt were built there for a TV movie called The Fourth Wise Man. It was the home for seven years during the 1990's to the popular CBS series Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. More recently the ranch was used for scenes in the movies Blast from the Past and The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas, and episodes of Diagnosis Murder, Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, and part 2 of the 2001 season finale of The X Files.
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