ABSTRACT
Lone Pine is significant in Western tourism as a special example of a place that has utilised its cinematic heritage to leverage strong flows of tourism. Established in the mid-nineteenth century, Lone Pine's history is similar to many other small towns around the California and Nevada border area. The annual festival was established in 1990, intriguingly during a period when Westerns were thought to be well and truly dead and buried. Its genesis was in the activities of Dave Holland, a Hollywood film production company manager and film history enthusiast. In the early 1980s, Holland organised two tours of Lone Pine for 20 or so of his family and friends. Hiring a bus they headed into the Alabama Hills and tried to match locations to photographic stills from films of the 1930s and 1940s. The highlight of the tour was a formal dinner amongst the rocks.
