Alabama Hills

The Alabama Hills are a range of mountains near Lone Pine, California that includes Mount Whitney. The rounded contours of the Alabamas contrast with the sharp ridges of the Sierra Nevada; however, the Alabamas are no older than the Sierra; both were formed by the same uplifting 100 million years ago. Different patterns of erosion account for the difference.

The Alabama Hills were named for CSS Alabama[?]. When news of the Confederate warship's exploits reached prospectors in California sympathetic to the South, they named many mining claims after her, and the name came to be applied to the entire mountain range. Then, when Alabama was sunk off the coast of Normandy by USS Kearsarge in 1864, prospectors sympathetic to the North named a mining district, mountain pass, a peak, and a town after Kearsarge.

The Alabama Hills are a popular location for television and movie productions set in the archetypical "rugged" environment. Since the early 1920s, stars including Tom Mix[?], Hopalong Cassidy[?], Gene Autry, and the Lone Ranger have been filmed there. Classics such as "Gunga Din," "Springfield Rifle," and "How the West Was Won" as well as more recent productions such as "Tremors" and "Joshua Tree" were filmed at sites known as "Movie Flats" and Movie Flat Road.