Beautiful shot from "The Virginian" helps unlock the secrets of a virtually unknown Southern California filming location

"Trail to Ashley Mountain" (1966 episode of "The Virginian")

I've spent some time recently studying this shot from season five of the TV series "The Virginian," which filmed in a lot of interesting locations during its nine-year run but made especially good use of the Conejo Valley region.

 

Doug McClure, right, and guest star Martin Milner in the Sherwood Valley

The same episode features incredible shots of what I call the Sherwood Valley — where the exclusive Sherwood Country Club is located today.

 

"Gretzky Hill" — a background feature from the TV Westerns becomes home to the rich and famous

When I say "exclusive," I mean exclusive. For example, hockey icon Wayne Gretzky lived here for some time, building one of the fanciest estates you'll ever see right on top of the same hill seen in "The Virginian."

 

The Gretzky estate, perched among rocks and hills seen in many Westerns

As fancy estates go, the Gretzky place is a nice one — and it benefits from a background made famous in "The Virginian," "Gunsmoke" and many other Westerns. I believe the property sold for about $23 million a while back.

 

"The Virginian": "The Long Way Home" (1966)

We'll go into detail about filming in the Sherwood Valley in an upcoming post, but I'll leave you with a teaser before we get back to a filming location that's a bit more obscure.

 

Distinctive features of the Sherwood Valley, looking west

Not that it needs to be circled, but notice this configuration of hills in the background in "The Long Way Home," another episode from season five of "The Virginian."

 

Sherwood Country Club: looking west down the fairway on the second hole

Now take a gander at this contemporary shot of the second hole at the Sherwood Country Club.

 

The same hills seen in "The Virginian"

You may have already spotted it, but there's that same background feature, circled here in yellow. Again, we will be zooming in on this area in detail in an upcoming post.

 

"The Virginian": The screenshot that launched a thousand bootsteps

But let's get back to that stunning shot from "The Virginian," which takes us almost 10 miles west of the Sherwood Valley and the Gretzky house, to a location that was pretty much off the radar of film historians until now.

 

The same location today: Rancho Potrero Open Space (Google Maps)

The good news is that the location remains intact today, having eluded the residential housing boom that befell much of the region. Some of what we see here remains in private hands, but it is adjacent to a public hiking area.

 

Many key features can still be identified today — even on Google

Even with the vague backgrounds in this Google Maps photo, many of the features seen in the "Virginian" shot can be recognized — from a dip in the ridgeline at top left ("A") to a surviving U-shaped road at bottom right ("H").

 

The same features identified in "Trail to Ashley Mountain"

The original "Virginian" shot from 1966 also contains those same features. Some of the best matches here are angular ridge C, tree-lined creekbed E, color-matched hilltop G and, of course, the U-shaped road, H.

 

West entrance to Rancho Potrero Open Space — off Potrero Road near Rancho Dos Vientos

But just matching up a Google shot will never do if it's possible to get out there in person. So even though it's been 100-plus degrees around here lately, we found our way to the Rancho Potrero trailhead the other day.

 

Bad news: Private property, set off by a barbed-wire fence

Some of the news was bad — mainly having to do with this fence, which kept us from our main objective. We had hoped to take a shot from the original camera location used in "The Virginian," which remains inaccessible.

 

"Trail to Ashley Mountain's" valley in 2021

But we still were able to get a decent look at some of the terrain seen in the "Virginian" shot. This photo from our trek includes several markers identified previously, along with at least one additional landmark of interest.

 

"The Virginian" landmarks noted in the 2021 photo

A few of the previously noted background features are no longer visible from this angle, but most still are.

 

The original "Virginian" shot with markers noted

Here's the "Virginian" shot again with the original markers noted, to compare with with the recent photo above.

 

"Trail to Ashley Mountain": a key marker on the ridge

Another landmark in the "Virginian" screen shot is the lumpy section of ridgeline noted here.

 

The same section of ridgeline on our recent visit to the site

This landmark could not be distinguished in the Google Maps shot, but it's easy to identify in the photo from the recent Rancho Potrero expedition.

 

A closer look at that same ridgeline

Another shot from our recent visit provides a more detailed look at this rocky section of the ridgeline.

 

"Wagon Train" episode "The Bill Tawnee Story" (1958)

The same rocky ridgeline can be seen as far back as 1958 in the long-running series "Wagon Train," one of the first major TV Westerns to film throughout much of the Conejo Valley region.

 

There's that same ridge again

"Wagon Train" pioneered many locations that would turn up later in "The Virginian," "Gunsmoke," "Rawhide" and other Western TV shows of the period. We'll be taking a deeper dive into all those shows in upcoming posts.

 

Location sleuth Aaron St. John on his first mount

Filming at Rancho Potrero may have gone undiscovered without the tireless work of location searcher Aaron St. John, who has been going pound for pound with me on the heavy lifting lately. Thanks, Aaron!