Tag Founders

These are newspaper articles with stories involving the founders who developed Pioneertown Ca. USA.

Wild West Not So Wild In
Town Built For Westerns

Pioneertown's great white father is producer Philip Kranse, who moved his company here for keeps to make "Cisco Kid" thriller. Now you can't tell where real life ends and the reel life begins.

Pioneertown Is Becoming
Hollywood Of Westerns

These places will be used as movie sets, and in between are propped real false-front sets imported from Hollywood. The towns 300 pre-Hollywood residents will get in the act, too. The barber who runs the “Klip ‘N Kurl” place will play barber for “Cisco Kid.” The town electrician will work the klieg lights; the Red Dog bartender will act movie bartender.

Genuine Wild West Town
Springs Up in Desert

The Wild West not being so wild anymore, a Western movie company is turning this desert village into a permanent cowtown. This Hollywood version of the good, old days started out to be a resort for Western movie stars with millyuns. Even the stores of the tiny one-street town were built in old-fashioned Western style to make oatburner heroes feel right at home.

DESERT VILLAGE NOW MOVIETOWN
Company Makes Permanent Location

December 3, 1948
The Tampa Tribune
Old News

The entrance to the village has a sign, "Pioneertown is this-a-way." Next sign: "Horseless carriages ain't aloud on Mane St." even Producer Krasne discreetly parks his Cadillac off the dirt street.

Pioneertown, Realtors’ Version of Old West,
Becomes Movie Producer’s Horse Opera Center

The entrance to the village as a sign "Pioneertown Is This-A-Way." Next sign: "Horseless carriages Aint Aloud on Mane St." Even producer Kranse discreetly parks his Cadillac off the dirt street.

Pioneertown, 30 Miles Away,
Will Revive Early Days

A new road to Pioneertown, the final phase of a scenic highway which brings Bear Valley about 55 miles from Palm Springs is now open. Pioneertown, the new old west town in the San Bernardino mountains, is only 30 miles from the Village by way of Indian avenue and a panoramic scenic road.

Johnsons Hollywood

Aside to pedestrians: PIoneertown, the new Hollywood for western films near Palm Springs, has a law set down by movie star president Russell Hayden. You can't drive your car on the main street. It's unpaved, will remain that way, and only for horses and people.

Town Incorporated for Location Work

The latest movie moviemaker the Pioneertown people enticed there was Gene Autry, who usually flies hundreds of miles to find backgrounds for his Columbia westerns. They persuaded him Pioneertown looked just as good as Arizona and was considerably closer.

Gene Autry Finds Ideal Locale

Like all America, Pioneertown has a history, starting point in its development. In the case of this little old West town, the idea was born when Dick Curtis, a cowboy actor discovered that the country it is around what is now Pioneertown afforded the perfect setting for the making of western movies.

Just Like a Movie

Even in California, Pioneertown rates as something special. For here is an entire community—schools, saloons, dusty streets—that was built to provide a permanent set for Western movies.