The Mysterious Alabama Hills of California

The Alabama Hills is a small, fascinating area just off of Highway 395 in California.

The area has been used as the setting in numerous movies, commercials, and music videos.

The weathered boulders that make up the area are extremely beautiful, sitting at the base of the sheer eastern face of the Sierra Nevada, and yet so many people don't even know it's there and so drive right past.

It seems odd to have an area in California, clear across the country from the state of Alabama, named the Alabama Hills. This area is actually named for a Confederate warship named the Alabama. Many miners in the Lone Pine area were Confederate sympathizers, and hearing about the exploits of the warship, The Alabama, they named numerous mining claims in honor of it. Eventually the entire area became known as the Alabama Hills.

When the Alabama was sunk by the Union Kearsarge in 1864, the Union sympathizers to the north named a mining district, a mountain pass, a mountain peak, and a town after their favorite warship, The Kearsarge.

• Star Trek V
• Star Trek VII
• Nevada
• Tremors
• North to Alaska
• Rawhide
• Riders of the Purple Sage
• Hop-A-Long Cassidy (Enters)
• How the West Was Won
• Farewell to Manzanar
• G.I. Jane
• Chaplin
• Maverick
• The Lone Ranger
• The Great Race
• Where the Buffalo Roam
• The Flintstones
• The Man From Utah

The Alabama Hills have a long history of being a filming location. There have been numerous movies, commercials, and music videos filmed there and new ones are often added.

Description from the maker of the video below:

"I give commentary on a few examples of movies filmed here, but many more have shown this area in them (Ex. Tremors, Hopalong Cassidy movies, etc.). This one may take some pauses and repeated watching to figure out everything I show since I did not explain everything. Some is obvious, but some things are subtle.

I have an old blog on this location:

http://the-great-silence.blogspot.com/2008/03/rawhide-burial-site-alabama-hills.html"

His blog is very good and has information on several different spots in the Alabama Hills and what is filmed where.