Starting in 1939, the dusty streets of Old Tucson (and eventually Mescal) rose and prospered under the boots of Gene Autry, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Stewart, Burt Lancaster, Glenn Ford, Kirk Douglas, John Wayne, Paul Newman, Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson, Charlton Heston, James Coburn, Robert Mitchum, Ann Margret, Gene Wilder, Harrison Ford, James Garner, Ricardo Montalban, Chevy Chase, Steve Martin, Kurt Russell, Val Kilmer, Cuba Gooding Jr, Gene Hackman, Russell Crowe, and Leonardo Di Caprio.

You will recognize Old Tucson as the background in more than 300 Westerns and television shows. John Wayne starred in four movies here, and each film was responsible for adding buildings to the town. With Rio Bravo came a saloon, bank and doctor’s office. With McClintock came a hotel. With El Dorado, Front Street took on a whole new look. And with Rio Lobo came a cantina, a creek, a jail and a ranch house.

Many film and television programs made the sets home as well. Little House on the Prairie, Gunsmoke and The New Maverick are among the more memorable productions that were all filmed on site. In addition the studios played host to individual episodes of Bonanza, Death Valley Days, and High Chaparral. In fact, an entire area of the lot is devoted to High Chaparral and you can step inside the cabin which served as home for the Little House on the Prairie cast members.

Get it? Old Tucson Studios is one of the most active filming locations for Western-themed movies, television, cable shows and commercials in the United States. It burst into being in 1939 when Columbia Pictures, for the movie Arizona, built a replica of Tucson in the 1860s. In just a little over a month, 50 buildings rose out of the dusty prairie, many of them built from over 300,000 adobe bricks made from the desert earth. Many of those structures still stand today.

Old Tucson Company now owns two western production locations.

Old Tucson Studios, twelve miles west of Tucson, is the one that is open to the public. Set on 320 acres in the Tucson Mountain Park in the Sonoran Desert, 75 wood and adobe buildings line dirt streets. It is an active, bustling community with all sorts of entertainment for visitors including a full array of live shows and stunts, Old West dramas, saloon musicals, and trail rides.

Mescal, set further away from town, is an open prairie ghost town set on 80 acres. Its 44 western buildings are in the midst of the high desert with sweeping views of mountains and prairie. If a production company wants to film here, they need to come prepared. Due to the property’s remote setting, a film production company must arrange for power and restroom facilities.