'Garden of the Gods'- Various films & TV shows- Santa Susana Park- Chatsworth California - Movie Locations on Waymarking.com

Santa Susana Park consisting of 'Garden of the Gods', unique megalithic rock formations featured in several films and TV shows.
Part of the movie ranch has been preserved as parkland on both sides of Redmesa Road, north of Santa Susana Pass Road in Chatsworth. This section includes the famous "Garden of the Gods" on the west side of Redmesa, in which many rock formations seen in countless old movies and TV shows are accessible to the public. Also preserved as parkland, unmarked, is an area on the east side of Redmesa that includes the popular Lone Ranger Rock, which appeared beside a rearing Silver, the Lone Ranger's horse, in the opening to each episode of the "Lone Ranger" TV show.

This rocky area became the go-to outdoor location for Westerns in particular and also appeared in many adventures, war movies, comedies, science-fiction films and other productions, standing in for Africa, the Middle East, the South Pacific and any number of exotic locations.

Buster Keaton's Three Ages (1923), Herman Brix's Hawk of the Wilderness, Laurel and Hardy's The Flying Deuces (1939), John Wayne's The Fighting Seabees (1944), John Ford's Stagecoach (1939), and Richard Burton's The Robe (1953) are just a few of the high-profile productions that filmed at the ranch. The rocky terrain and narrow, winding roads frequently turned up in Republic serials of the 1940s and were prominently featured in chases and shootouts throughout the golden era of action B-Westerns in the 1930s and 1940s.

As Hollywood's focus began to shift to the new medium of television in the late 1940s, throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s, Iverson became a mainstay of countless early television series, including The Lone Ranger, The Roy Rogers Show, The Gene Autry Show, The Cisco Kid, Zorro, and Tombstone Territory.

An estimated total of 3,500 or more productions, about evenly split
between movies and television episodes, were filmed at the ranch during its heyday. The long-running TV Western The Virginian filmed on location at Iverson Garden of the Gods areas in the ranch's later period, as did Bonanza and Gunsmoke.


Movie ranches first came into use in Southern California for location
shooting in the 1920s when westerns had become increasingly popular.
Hollywood-based studios found it difficult to recreate the wide expanses of the old West on sound stages or in studio backlots. Other large-scale themed productions also needing large outdoor settings, such as for battle scenes in war films, also needed undeveloped areas and began using the countryside and movie ranches in the region near their Hollywood studios.

Movie or TV Show: Stagecoach Year Released or First Aired: 1,939.00 IMDB Link: [Web Link]

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Date Logged Log User Rating   10/28/2011 calgriz visited it