Once upon a time…When Hollywood movies were actually
made in Hollywood, finding a suitable filming location was never a
problem. The movie makers simply went
out to their own backyard and started shooting!
Welcome to the place that got “shot-up†the most, the
mother of all movie ranches – Iverson’s.Â
Return with us now, to those thrilling matinee days of yesteryear. Where the “Duke†boarded a particular Stagecoach (1939) that would go on to
take him to stardom. Where The Lone Ranger (1949) could be found
riding up to that certain rock each week to rear his horse. On screen, Iverson’s could be both the Wild
West and India, too. From hard riding,
two-fisted westerns to death-defying cliff hanging serials, in over 3,000
movies and TV shows, the ranch became one of the industry’s most recognizable
backgrounds.
This photo from Jerry England's web site www.cowboyup.com is one of many that provide fascinating "then-and-now" records of the Iverson Ranch. England's photo caption reads: (Above) In the center of this photo is the construction site for the Toll Brothers condominiums. The Middle Iverson Ranch was (#5) the apartments to the right. The Garden of the Gods (#3) were located on the Lower Iverson Ranch. The 118 Freeway (can't be seen in photo) separates the Middle and Lower Iverson Ranch areas. The Iverson western street was located where (#2) the Indian Hills Mobile Home Village sits today. The eastern edge of the Bell Moving Picture Ranch was (#4) and the Chatsworth Reservoir is (#1).
Now before we set foot on the ranch, it’s important
that you understand what the Hollywood Studio Zone is all about and how it
relates to Iverson’s. The Studio Zone is
an area that takes in everything within a 30-mile radius of the Hollywood
studios and  basically includes all of
greater Los Angeles. The Zone’s
northwest corner is primarily where, once upon a time, some two dozen movie
ranches were located. It was and still
is the place where you found the wild open spaces, the dusty trails, the rocky
canyons  - all within an easy drive of
studio soundstages. It’s one of the
reasons why the movie industry moved here in the first place. Still, the industry producers and the unions
needed to mark out a work zone. From a
location standpoint, everything outside of the zone was considered a “distant
locationâ€, which translated to more expensive hotel stays, per-diem costs and
so on. Locations within the zone were
considered “localâ€, thus were favored by studios and producers.   Location!Â
Location! Location! Â is the byword
in real estate. However in Hollywood,
it’s more a case of  “A tree is a tree. A
rock is a rock. Shoot it in Griffith Parkâ€.Â
At least three Hollywood producers are credited with saying that. A good many more , though, said simply  “Let’s shoot it at Iverson’s.â€
Located at the very northwestern tip of the zone, where
the famed San Fernando Valley meets the Simi Valley, is the Santa Susana Pass
and that’s where you would have found the Iverson Ranch. In the business it was known as Iverson’s
because there were two Iverson Ranches, the “upper†and the†lowerâ€. The “upper†belonged to Aaron Iverson and the
“lower†to his brother Joe. There was no
dividing physical fence even though the brothers were not the best of friends,
as that would have hindered filming and affected their income. Back in the days of the “real†West, the
Santa Susana Pass was one of the main routes the stagecoach used to travel over
the mountains and into Los Angeles. In
1880, a stagecoach brought a Swedish immigrant named Augusta Wagman to the San
Fernando Valley and the small frontier-like community of Chatsworth. She purchased a 160-acre piece of rocky,
hilly land that was not at all suited to farming. Augusta’s homestead was remote and seemed to
be even hotter in the summer and colder in the winter, than any of her
neighbors. Needing help as well as
company, she went on to marry a Norwegian immigrant Karl Iverson and started a
family. This was many years before the
San Fernando Valley became the cement prairie of tract homes and shopping malls
it is today - long before it ever became known as “The Valleyâ€. This 22
mile-long stretch of flatland, all 177 square-miles of it, was mostly worthless
and dried-up desert. But all that
changed in 1913, when city engineer William Mulholland built a 223 mile-long
aqueduct to bring water to an ever thirsty Los Angeles. Suddenly, when that
mighty faucet was turned-on, the land wasn’t so worthless anymore. Almost
overnight, things began to grow and the “valley†started to turn green. However, for the Iverson family -now with two
sons- things had already started turning green the year before.
In 1912, a movie location scout happened by and
introduced the Iverson’s to a new cash crop called movie ranching. This
peculiar new enterprise involved renting out land not for planting, but for
making movies. The Iverson’s decided to
give movie location-ranching a try and at first, Karl and Augusta supervised
the needs of the visiting movie companies themselves. By the mid-1920’s, their sons Aaron and Joe
also became involved. Upon the death of
Karl Iverson in 1947, his will dictated that the now 500-acre property be
divided between them.  Aaron got the “upper†ranch and Joe the
“lowerâ€. Like the brothers themselves,
each ranch had its own characteristics or features that movie companies
sought. The main attraction at Iverson’s
period and the sole location star was on the “lower†ranch –a place nicknamed “The
Garden of The Godsâ€. This “rock starâ€
(pardon the pun) has made so many appearances in movies and television shows,
it’s just about the most photographed piece of sandstone on the planet. It’s believed that these two strange and
imposing rocks were named by an early location scout who thought they rather
resembled a similar rock formation in Colorado.Â
Oddly enough years later, they were prominently featured in the Glenn
Ford western The Man from Colorado (1948). In John Ford’s classic Stagecoach (1939), the “Gods†are seen
in the background as the stage pulls into the Apache Wells relay station. Earlier in an area adjacent to the “Godsâ€, is
where John Wayne first boards the stage - and close to that is the location of
the burned-out ferry scene. John Ford, who always knew the value of a good
location, had previously used the ranch to stand-in for India for the Shirley
Temple picture Wee Willie Winkie (1937). For that film, he had a British colonial fort
set constructed at great cost. Â Speaking
of colonial India, the Lower Iverson was a star in both Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935) and The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936). Apart from having the most photogenic rocks
and the original Iverson homestead, the lower ranch was also famous for its
canyon trails. In the $2 million
production of They Died with Their Boots
On (1941), star Errol Flynn as General Custer escorts a wagon train through
the Black Hills… only to be ambushed by Indians near “The Garden of The
Godsâ€. In another Warner Brothers
western Carson City (1952) with
Randolph Scott, viewers will recognize a rock cliff formation with a solitary
tree growing out of the top known as “Nyoka Rockâ€. Yes –all the great rocks have names, but this
one is named for one of the many literally cliff-hanging Republic serials Perils of Nyoka (1942).  However, in numerous westerns including Carson City (1952), the panoramic view
from “Nyoka Rock†is even more enhanced, when a period locomotive is seen on
the Southern Pacific train tracks of the Santa Susana Pass in the distance. Before serial actor Clayton Moore put on a
mask for good, he was wearing it for the usual bad reasons, as when he starred
in Republic’s Adventures of Frank &
Jesse James (1948). When, as kids,
we attended those Saturday matinees at our local theaters, we didn’t pay much
attention to the backgrounds in action-packed movies; if we had we would have
noticed the curious rock formation that Clayton Moore was standing on. On television each week, he would go on to rear
his white horse up by another  rock
whilst letting out with the words “Hi –Yo- Silver -Awayâ€. Through one of television’s earliest hits, The Lone Ranger (1949), the aptly named
“Indian Head Rock†would forever become immortalized.
Indian Head Rock became immortalized by The Lone Ranger TV show.
The rock today as photographed by Kevin Closson, whose blog provides a great history of the site along with many contemporary photos and film clips from movies shot at the location. Click here to visit.
The real beauty of independent movie ranches like
Iverson’s and those that the studios owned themselves, is that anything shot
there could be easily intercut with footage from distant locations like Lone
Pine and Monument Valley. A rider could
leave town, usually a set on a studio backlot, ride across the prairie of one
particular movie ranch, get ambushed by
the rocks at Iverson’s and get taken into another town, which is yet another
set on the backlot of yet another studio.Â
It would all be edited seamlessly and you’d assume it was all a
continuous shot. Even “poverty rowâ€
productions filmed this way. Basically,
all the scenery they could ever want was in the Studio Zone. If it wasn’t –well there was always stock footage
that could be cut in to make it all seem even grander than it actually
was. The movies by definition are an
illusion and nobody understood that better than cost conscious Hollywood. Again –“A tree is a tree. A rock is a rock.
Shoot it†in the Studio Zone. That was
the prevailing philosophy up until the late 1960’s.