Images

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Images

RRC is really a series of canyons and stratas that constitute the current parkland. Each region within the park has its distinct personality and thus its own cinematic strengths as seen in the films that were made there. Many films utilized multiple areas to provide greater variety and more dynamic images (Three Godfathers (MGM, 1936), for example, uses four park locales), but others use only a single Red Rock Canyon location.

Some of the locales within RRC: Iron Canyon (where portions of Waterhole #3 were filmed), Scenic Canyon (where the Jurrasic Park sequences were made), Hagen Canyon (the most potent film making location where most RRC films have scenes) as well as the Red Cliffs, Nightmare Gulch, Ricardo Campground, Red Rooster, and the Heliopolis. In 1994 with the passage of the Desert Protection Act, Red Rock Canyon State Park expanded to include the previously BLM-controlled Last Chance Canyon, and with it the park expanded to its present twenty-seven thousand acres.

Here are a series of motion picture stills which reveal some of the various filmed faces of RRC.

Two views of Hagen Canyon:

Ken Maynard overlooking the rock feature "The Acropolis" at Hagen Canyon in Tombstone Canyon (1932).

The "Land of the Dead" gulch feature in Hagen Canyon:
Stunt man Dave Sharpe descends on one of the bad guys in Buck Rogers (1940).

One view of Iron Canyon:

A rarely seen photograph of the man-made pond from Waterhole #3 in the Iron Canyon section of Red Rock Canyon State Park. In the background are the Red Cliffs. At the conclusion of production on the film, the movie makers left this concrete tub behind. It lies today less then a mile off of Highway 14.

At The Scenic Canyon (in a photo not pictured in the Field Guide):
From Dakota Incident (1956) featuring "The Phantom Ship" rock face in Scenic Canyon. Note the trench in the foreground which was dug by the production crew just for these scenes. It is no longer part of the Red Rock topography.

A view of the Heliopolis:

A scene from Three Godfathers (1936) in front of Camel Rock in the Heliopolis region.

A view at the Red Cliffs (in a photo not used in the Field Guide):
A scene from The Fastest Gun Alive (1956) with Broderick Crawford.

Ricardo, RRC's current campground site (in a photo not pictured in the current printing of the Field Guide):
A scene from Danger Valley (1937) with Jack Randall. Ricardo Camp was not heavily used by Hollywood, but was the location of RRC's general store. At one time, Ricardo was considered for use in Jurassic Park™, before the film makers settled on Scenic Canyon.

In Last Chance Canyon:

Another location from Three Godfathers (1936), this time for one of the opening scenes at Last Chance.

Created by Eric Forkrud