Donald "Red" Barry's wonder horse Banner hides in the bushes near a rock with an L-shaped crack

L-R: Wild Bill Elliott, Bob Livingston, Don Barry, Roy Rogers,

Allan "Rocky" Lane, Sunset Carson

Donald "Red" Barry may have been one of the shortest cowboy heroes of the B-Western era, but I also think he may have been the best actor in the bunch.

"Ghost Valley Raiders" (Republic, 1940): Lobby card shot at Iverson's Grove Cabin

Barry shot most of his Republic pictures on the Iverson Ranch, and they're some of the best showcases for the ranch if you can find them. I recently scanned "Ghost Valley Raiders" and it's a rocktacular — I want to thank Western movie location historian Tinsley Yarbrough for pointing me to the movie.

Donald Barry and "Banner" at the Grove Cabin on the Lower Iverson

Barry rode a cool movie horse in the 1940s — Banner. The word is that Banner, a big bay, later did movie work with John Wayne, Rocky Lane and Andy Devine. Ouch!

Donald Barry and Banner in "Ghost Valley Raiders"

Banner was presented as one of those super-smart movie horses, and in "Ghost Valley Raiders" he was given a number of "wonder horse"-type stunts to do to help Barry fight bad guys.

Banner hides in the bushes — positioned conveniently next to a distinctive rock

In one of those stunts, all Banner had to do was go hide in the bushes. As it turns out, he hid right next to a rock with a distinctive curved, or L-shaped, crack running through it.

I was able to find that same rock on a recent visit to the former movie ranch.

The rock is kind of hidden among the condos just east of Redmesa Road.

"The Roy Rogers Show" (1957): Roy and Trigger at the L-shaped crack

Banner wasn't the only famous movie horse to be filmed at the L-shaped crack. In this shot from an episode of "The Roy Rogers Show," Roy works with Trigger near the same cracked rock.

The shot comes from the episode "End of the Trail," which premiered Jan. 27, 1957, during the show's sixth and final season. The episode would have been filmed in 1956.

This Google aerial shows where the cracked rock can be found. It's in a private community, but in my experience the residents have been cool about visitors who are there for thoughtful rock gawking.

The "Hangman's Tree" on the Lower Iverson ("Ghost Valley Raiders")

The cracked rock sequence in "Ghost Valley Raiders" also features the so-called "Hangman's Tree," which was located nearby but did not survive condo development. Click here to read a detailed post about the tree.

Another view of the Hangman's Tree in "Ghost Valley Raiders"

Oddly enough, no one seems to recall an instance where the "Hangman's Tree" was used for a hanging. If you know of one, I'd like to hear about it. Please comment or send a note.

What caused cowboy star Roy Rogers to "flip"?

"Ride in the Death Wagon" — episode of "The Roy Rogers Show," aired April 6, 1952

Sometimes what you see isn't what you get. This shot of Roy Rogers riding Trigger on the Upper Iverson, taken from a 1952 episode of "The Roy Rogers Show," is in fact printed backward. That is, left is right and right is left, like a mirror image. That's the way they ran this scene in the episode, because they wanted to have Roy riding from left to right, or west to east. It would have cost money to have a crew go out and shoot him riding, and they already had some perfectly good footage of him riding in the other direction, so they just flipped it and used the same footage twice.

Same episode, same cowboy ... opposite direction

Here's another shot from the same episode of the show, in which Roy is shown properly oriented, in virtually the same spot. You can see from the road going up the hill in the background that they didn't bother to shoot Roy riding in both directions, they just flipped the whole shot and ran the same footage twice. Flipping the shot was just one of the tricks used to stretch the budget, and in the days before DVD, Blu-ray, mp4 — heck, even before VHS — before we had freeze-frame and slow-motion, before viewers were able to take a close look at those backgrounds — and before people like me became obsessed with every little detail of the Iverson Movie Ranch — they could get away with it.

Click here to see another example of flipping the shot, from the TV show "Adventures of Kit Carson."