Heading down Topanga Canyon Boulevard off the Ronald Reagan Freeway, Steve Latshaw knows he's almost home when he spots the mobile home park on his right. That's where the old western town set used to be, he invariably finds himself thinking.
Turning onto Santa Susana Pass Road, Latshaw envisions a pack of Harleys roaring down the curving two-lane country road as they did in countless '60s biker movies. Hanging another right up Redmesa Drive, there's a rocky cliff on his left--the spot where an Indian war party watched a wagon train travel up the canyon in 1941's "They Died With Their Boots On" starring Errol Flynn, Latshaw thinks to himself.
A bit farther up the hill, just before entering his condominium complex, Latshaw sees the most famous rock formation in TV history: the very same boulder Clayton Moore races up to before rearing up Silver in the opening credits of "The Lone Ranger." Looking at it, you can almost hear the adrenaline-pumping "William Tell Overture" swelling in the background. Latshaw does. "I go through the same thoughts every single day," he says. "It's like a dream world."
Each year, thousands of tourists come to Los Angeles in hopes of encountering a piece of movie history. But Latshaw and his fellow residents at the California West condominiums in Chatsworth live smack-dab in the middle of it.
The 290-unit condo complex is on part of the old Iverson movie location ranch where, beginning in 1912, scenes from more than 2,000 movies and television shows were filmed.
Corriganville, another popular movie location ranch in nearby Simi Valley, is now a regional park with hiking trails. Homes recently were built on what once was the parking lot that served visitors after actor-owner Ray "Crash" Corrigan opened the ranch to the public on weekends in 1949.
But there's nothing quite like California West, a sprawling complex of two-story units. Where else is it possible to take out your garbage and see, only a few yards away, a boulder archway through which William S. Hart, Gene Autry, Lash LaRue, "Wild Bill" Elliott and countless other movie cowboys rode? Or walk your dog through the "cave" used in Disney's "Zorro" TV series of the late '50s?
Or sit on your front porch and see, only 60 feet away, the very spot where a youthfully thin John Wayne stopped the Lordsburg-bound stage in "Stagecoach" and Alan Ladd was later stopped by a Japanese patrol in "China"?
