Alabama Hills
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The Alabama Hills, which extend in the direction of Owens Valley
The Alabama Hills are a mountain region in eastern California and are part of the Sierra Nevada.
Famous are the Alabama Hills for bizarre, orange granite arches and therefore served as a filming location for many western movies. They are located on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range about 500 meters altitude above the Owens Valley near Lone Pine. Geographically, they are an independent mountain range, but geologically they belong to the Sierra Nevada mountains.
The Alabama Hills are in federal ownership and managed under the name Alabama Hills Recreation Area by the Bureau of Land Management. The rounded contours of the Alabama Hills form a contrast to the sharp rocks of the Sierra Nevada. Nevertheless, the two regions are geologically the same age, only the different erosion patterns yield the different landscapes.
Two main types of rocks lie on the surface of the Alabama Hills. The one type is a gray brown orange weathered metamorphic rock that is 150-200 million years old. The other there aufzufindende rock variety is 90 million years old granite, which weathers to potato-shaped, large boulders, which are often then due to the spheroidal weathering as a single stone in the landscape.
Dozens of natural stone arches (English: arches ) are one of the main attractions of the Alabama Hills. They are easy to reach by short hikes of roads. The most popular stone arches are of Mobius Arch, Lathe Arch, the Eye of Alabama and the Whitney Portal Arch of origin of most of the roads and streets in the Alabama Hills is the Californian town of Lone Pine.
History
The Alabama Hills are named after the CSS Alabama Confederate privateer, of the California gold seekers, many of their claims " Alabama " christened in honor, because they sympathized with the Confederates. Soon, the name for the whole mountain range was in use. Conversely named sympathizers of the northern states a mining district, a mountain pass, a peak and a city by the USS Kearsarge, which the CSS Alabama sank in 1864 off the coast of Normandy at Cherbourg.
The Alabama Hills are a popular area for television and film productions, especially for Western, because they are an archetypal rocky landscape. Since the early 1920s, 150 movies and a dozen TV shows have been filmed, including Tom Mix and classics like How the West Was Won. Even younger productions as Tremors - In the Land of Tremors and Gladiator were filmed in places such as Movie Flats and Movie Flat Road.
The Lone Pine Film History Museum in nearby Lone Pine has published a guide to the Alabama Hills, which mainly shows locations in the area but will also address landscape and plant life.