Pioneertown, CA

~by Dena Burroughs

A VISIT TO PIONEERTOWN, CA - October 21, 2007

Zooming my camera’s lens towards the Post Office building, I do what hundreds of people have done before me. Young and old, visitors have clicked, flashed, and turned this wooden structure into “the most photographed Post Office in the entire United States.” Xerxes I, King of Persia, would be jealous of the attention.

Western movie actors have walked in and out of this building countless times. Varied films and TV shows have been, and still are, filmed at this spot. Universal Pictures, Paramount pictures, you name it, they have all worked it.

Taking us back over a hundred years, this Post Office, and the town around it, gives its visitors a mirage into the lives of this country’s pioneers. Sunny and hot as the Western deserts would have been, one appreciates the dedication of those men and women who went on to create entire towns for themselves. Resilient as the environment around them, they worked hard, and won.

Quaint, quiet, and impressive, is how I would describe it. Pioneertown, CA, located 30 minutes north of Palm Springs, is the name of this town created by Hollywood actors for the use of Hollywood filmmakers.

Only a few feet from the famous Post Office, I walk by the Pioneertown’s Trading Post. Not much further away, I find its enormous wooden stable. Most to my enjoyment, the double door entrance to the Saloon follows. Logs are held up horizontally in front of every building – a place to “park” one’s horse. “Kansas,” I think, “I think I saw this very Saloon in the movie Kansas,” but I may be wrong. “Jameson! A double shot of Jameson por favor,” I yell jokingly as I push the double doors to this Saloon that is actually inactive.

“Harriet’s Place,” or rather “Pappy and Harriet’s Place,” is the only real, working restaurant and country bar in Pioneertown. Gushing winds make its walls crack, and the plants hanging from its outside wooden posts barely seem to hang on now, as I look out the window and wait for my burger. Fabulous moose heads stare down at me from up high. Enormous elk antlers are also displayed like a trophy. Definitely a Country hangout, Reba, Tobi Keith, and Garth’s “The Dance” blast through the speakers one after the other.

Cuba, however, and as unlikely as it seems, manages right then to make a presence. Before I can believe my ears, I listen intently to what I swear is The Buena Vista Social Club’s “Oigame Compay!” all the while aware that it is much at odds with my surroundings.

And then it comes to me, as it seems I have forgotten, that Pioneertown, CA, its Post Office, Trading Post, Saloon, even this “Harriet’s,” came, after all, from the hand of Hollywood, and that in the fabulous world of Hollywood, even The Buena Vista Social Club, blasting in a Country bar, is possible.

[click pictures to enlarge]

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