Alabama Hills
| Alabama Hills | ||
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 The Alabama Hills that are in the direction of Owens Valley extend |
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| location | California (USA) | |
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| Coordinates | 36 ° 37 ′ N , 118 ° 6 ′ W | |
The Alabama Hills are a mountainous region in eastern California and are part of the Sierra Nevada .
The Alabama Hills are famous for their bizarre, orange-colored granite rock arches and have therefore been used as a location for numerous western films . They are located on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range about 500 meters above the Owens Valley , near Lone Pine . Geographically , they are an independent mountain range, but geologically they belong to the mountains of the Sierra Nevada.
The Alabama Hills are federally owned and administered by the Bureau of Land Management under the name Alabama Hills Recreation Area . The rounded outline of the Alabama Hills contrasts with the pointed cliffs of the Sierra Nevada. Nevertheless, the two landscapes are geologically the same, only the different erosion patterns result in the different landscapes.
Two main types of rock lie on the surface of the Alabama Hills. One is a gray-brown weathered orange metamorphic rock that is 150-200 million years old. The other type of rock to be found there is 90 million year old granite , which weathered to form large, potato-shaped boulders, which, due to spheroidal weathering, often stand as a single stone in the landscape.
Dozens of natural stone arches (ger .: arches ) are one of the main attractions of the Alabama Hills. They are easily reached by short walks from roads. The most popular stone arches are the Mobius Arch , Lathe Arch , Eye of Alabama, and Whitney Portal Arch . Most of the roads in the Alabama Hills start from the Californian town of Lone Pine.
history
The Alabama Hills are named after the privateer Alabama the Confederate , the Californian prospectors many of their honor Claims "Alabama" baptized because they sympathized with the Confederates. Soon the name became common for the whole mountain range. Conversely, sympathizers of the northern states named a mining district, a mountain pass, a summit and a city after the USS Kearsarge , which sank the Alabama off the coast of Normandy near Cherbourg in 1864 .
The Alabama Hills are a popular area for television and movie productions, especially westerns , because they are an archetypal rocky landscape. 150 films and about a dozen television shows have been made since the early 1920s, including Tom Mix and classics such as How the West Was Won . More recent productions, such as Tremors - In the Land of Rocket Worms and Gladiator , were filmed at locations such as Movie Flats and Movie Flat Road .
The Lone Pine Film History Museum in nearby Lone Pine has published a guide through the Alabama Hills, which mainly shows filming locations in the area but also deals with the landscape and flora.
Web links
- Geology Underfoot in Death Valley and Owens Valley , Sharp, Glazner (Mountain Press Publishing Company, Missoula; 1997) ISBN 0-87842-362-1 (English)
- Alabama Hills Recreation Area , US Bureau of Land Management (English)
- The rock arches of the Alabama Hills - with map and GPS coordinates (German)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Lone Pine Film History Museum ( Memento of the original from July 23, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Lone Pine Film History Museum: Alabama Hills of Lone Pine "Movie Road" Self Guided Tour ( Memento of the original from October 19, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
