The General Store in Pioneertown, California, 2022

Welcome to Pioneertown

It’s the 1940s and a movie star (a strong-looking man with a black moustache) starts looking for a place to build a town. Not just any old town. A town to make movies in. The plan is to build a town in the style of the 1880s.

The strong-looking man with the black moustache often plays 'the baddie' in the cowboy movies popular at this time.

The problem is the movies cost money. The sets are expensive to build and all they are are a thin facade. Whole streets are built for these movies and then completely destroyed once filming finishes. What a waste thinks the movie star.

A Town for Movie-Making

The movie star has an idea. His idea is to build a proper town, one that doesn't get destroyed, a town that can serve both as a backdrop for movie-making and an real place to live and work.

The movie star has some money. He has friends who have some money.

The movie star rides his horse into the high desert. He stops on a grassy knoll - so the story goes - and proclaims, "This is the place."

The movie star looks out over acres and acres of desert, a quiet rocky landscape home to rattlesnakes and coyotes, joshua trees and delicate wildflowers. In this place, the sun in summer regularly climbs above 40C.

Building a New Town to Look Old

The movie star and his movie friends invest in the land and commission the building of the town. The town is named Pioneertown. Although the town is new it’s built to look as if it’s sixty years old. The perfect set for Westerns. By the time the town is finished, those cowboy movies are being made there left, right and centre. Sometimes more than one at a time.

The town becomes, just as the movie star had hoped, both a temporary film set and a permanent place to live.

Sadly, the movie star dies only a few years later.

There were plans to expand the town. To build an airport, more housing, a swimming pool, golf course and an equestrian centre. But the water quality was poor and attempts to get further supplies to the town faltered. The expansion plans were eventually abandoned.

Cowboy Films

The popularity of the cowboy movie dwindled. No one wanted to watch them anymore.

I watched them.

Growing up in Britain in the 1970s and 80s, cowboy films were often the only films to watch on the telly on a Sunday afternoon. It was a world that couldn't have been further from my own. Desert, gunfights, wagons, cowboys fighting Indians. Glamourous women in gingham dresses. So many things to unpack here about how the world was back then.

Visiting Pioneertown

Visiting Pioneertown, in the summer, the sun feels closer. It's as if your body is testing the heat like holding a hand above a frying pan that's warming on the hob. The skin on the backs of my bare legs prickles. Sweat runs down from the pits of my arms, from the backs of my knees. I shake the bottle of water I'm holding before drinking the very last of it.

What we didn't know when we arrived was how quiet it would be in Pioneertown. The restaurants are shut. A few stores and artists' workshops are open, selling pottery and paintings. A few tourists, us included, drift in and out of the open stores seeking shade, looking for something to buy. We sit under a tree for a while flicking our shirts in and out, trying to move the air around our bodies.

Walking Down Mane Street

My daughter and I decide to walk up to the end of Mane Street. Beyond we see the mountains, summer dried and peppered with short, dark green plants. The street is wide and silent. A soft wind flutters a flag. Dark, looming clouds cover the sun giving us respite from the relentless UV rays.

A collection of joshua trees stand twisting in the heat. I imagine their roots twisting in the earth as they search and reach for moisture. The trees are fragile and endangered. Many of the desert plants look as if they're from a different time, a prehistoric time. Sharp but vulnerable the ecology, somehow, sustains itself.

As we walk, we squint and blink in the bright sunlight as it reveals itself from behind the clouds. Hats shield our eyes but the heat makes our progress slow. My daughter says we should turn around. Sweat beads across her nose.

There are houses here, low-slung homes for the few that still live in Pioneertown. A face appears at the window of one. I wonder to myself who lives there.

How to Build a Town to Make a Movie in