Bookin' It
The perfect literary companion for your Old West vacations.
Categories: Featured Travel Stories
By: TW Editors 03/01/2008
LONE PINE, CA
“There are still some places in the west where the quails cry ‘cuidado’; where all the speech is soft, all the manners gentle; where all the dishes have chile in them, and they make more of the Sixteenth of September than they do the Fourth of July. I mean in particular El Pueblo de Las Uvas. Where it lies, how to come at it, you will not get from me; rather would I show you the heron’s nest in the tulares. It has a peak behind it, glinting above the tamarack pines, above a breaker of ruddy hills that have a long slope valley-wards and the shoreward steep of waves toward the Sierras.”
Mary Austin didn’t reveal where this place was in her 1903 book The Land of Little Rain. We will: Las Uvas, or the Town of the Grape Vines, is Lone Pine, California.
Beautiful, remarkable Lone Pine is just a few miles from both Death Valley and Sequoia National Park. Originally, the town was closely tied to the mining industry. That changed in 1920, when the silent Western The Roundup was shot nearby. Since then, more than 250 films/TV episodes/commercials have been shot in the area. The Lone Pine Film Festival—held each October—attracts thousands of enthusiasts to see classic movies (mostly Westerns) and meet stars of the present and past. You can get the history of the movies filmed here at the free-admission Lone Pine Film History Museum.
As far as the restaurant fare goes, we can’t guarantee that all the dishes will have chile in them.
Trip Lit:
The Land of Little Rain by Mary Austin
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