Paramount Ranch

A movie ranch is a ranch that is at least partially dedicated for the creation and production of motion pictures and television productions. Originally, they were all within the 30-mile (48 km) studio zone, often in the foothills of the San Fernando Valley and Simi Valley.

Movie ranches first came into use for location shooting in Southern California during the 1920s with the rising popularity of westerns. Hollywood-based studios found it difficult to recreate the topography of the Old West on sound stages and studio backlots, so they looked to the rustic valleys, canyons and foothills of Southern California for filming locations. Other large-scale productions also needed large, undeveloped settings for outdoor scenes, e.g., war films for their battle scenes.

To achieve greater scope, productions would conduct location shooting in yonder parts of California, Arizona, and Nevada, but travel expenses for production staff created a dispute between workers and the studios. The studios agreed to pay union workers extra if they worked out of town. The definition of out of town specifically referred to a distance of greater than 30 miles (48 km) from the studio, or beyond the studio zone.

To solve this problem, many movie studios invested in large tracts of undeveloped rural land, in many cases existing ranches, located closer to Hollywood. In most cases, the ranches were located just within the 30-mile (48 km) perimeter, specifically in the Simi Hills in the western San Fernando Valley, the Santa Monica Mountains, and the Canyon Country area of the Greater Los Angeles Area. The natural California landscape proved to be suitable for western locations and other settings.

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