Oct. 11

The morning was overcast and the humidity was up and a light breeze blowing. A perfect day for a trip, so we, and the Drew's got away about 11am and headed west on US90 to the town of Brackettville and the Alamo Village Movie Location about 7 miles out of town. We paid out admission and drove the 2+ miles to the movie location. This is on a working ranch and we encountered several head of cattle and a couple of draft horses along the dirt/gravel road.
This active movie set consists of some 28 buildings and the Alamo set is some 300 yds. away.
The first movie location built in Texas, Alamo Village, is on the Happy and Virginia Shahan HV ranch. It was built for John Wayne's epic movie THE ALAMO. It featres the only replica of the 1936 Alamo. the adobe mission and town took almost two years to complete.
"Construction started in september 1957 and filming began in August 1959. According to ranch owner James T. "Happy" Shahan, one month before the movie was completed the cost was at $12 million and was the largest budget spent on making a film in the US up to that time.
The Alamo and the town were built with a dedication to authentically replicating San Antonio during the early 1800's. More than a million and a quarter adobe bricks were amde and used. It took 12 miles of water pipe, 30,000 square feet of imported Spanish roofing tile, and a million square feet of concrete flooring. Alamo Village is a complete town with jail saloon, general stores, stables, church, bank and blacksmith shop.
Additional construction allows the one of a kind facility to serve movie production companies as a fort, hacienda, frontier town, and a deserted Mexican village. It is stocked with stagecoaches, wagons, buggies, surreys, cannons, props, and set dressings. A prize herd of registered Texas Longhorns roam the ranch along with quarterhorses, goats, and sheep. Since the Alamo more that a hundred major movies, TV shows, documentaries, commercials and music videos have been filmed here."
As well as many displays there is a very extensive mueseum of John Wayne memorabelia including photos and many period items to be appreciated.
Some of the buildings are not accessible, due to high thresholds, but you can see in and get a very good idea of what is there. We visited the Cantina for lunch, very good and reasonably priced. There were not very many people there so it was very easy to move about town and the Alamo at our leisure.
The first person we met when we entered the town was the Marshal. He was an extra in the 1967 film "Bandolero" starring Jimmy Stewart, Dean Martin and Raquel Welch. He was in a barber shop scene and on camera for 4 seconds. He indicated it was a pleasure working with the three. He has been with the facility for 41 years.
When we left the facility we came back a different way going north east further into the hill country past a lot of large ranches, they have to be big as the ground is so poor and rocky it does not grow much grass or edible food for cattle or much of anything for that matter. Lots of sage brush, other brushy plants. Very few of the rivers have any water at all, maybe a small pool, only at one bridge did we see water moving. One river crossing was just black topped and when there is water it runs over the road. This was not a low water bridge as you see in many areas, this was a no water bridge.
Back to the SKP park a little before dark and considered this a very enjoyable day trip, something we will talk about for some time.