Valencia Oaks Movie Ranch

[CDoherty95]

Hey y'all!

A while back on the Hazzard Square thread I suggested that someone make a thread on the ranches used in Dukes.

So I took it upon myself to try and unravel the mystery that is Valencia Oaks Movie Ranch.

Hoss kindly supplied me with an aerial photo of the ranch from 1980,so sit back,grab a buttermilk or jug of shine and enjoy!!

Here's a link to the history of the ranch http://www.elsmerecanyon.com/lyoncanyon/lyon.htm#sites

This is the initial version of the photo that Hoss sent me. As you can see there's a faint outline of the road network

Here's a comparison between 1980 and 2005

Now technically I could do a Travis Bell and say that this next picture is my own work,but I got this picture from richardcummins.com

Here's the poorly labeled version of the map Hoss sent me. I'll elaborate on this in the future,but this is the basic version of the map

[CDoherty95]

The next few pictures are based at the Duke Farm (labeled 1 on the map) and Tom Sarmento's shop (labeled 2)

This first picture was taken from "Happy Birthday General Lee". You can just about see the road that goes around the lake in the background.

This next picture shows the Capitol city Junkyard. It took me ages to figure out where it was,but I've finally found it.

I managed to figure out where it was from the hill in the background of this picture,behind Denver's head

[CDoherty95]

I also stumbled across this video while I was researching the ranch

http://www.lostgenerallee.com/home.htm the video is about halfway down the page.

James Smith's Lee also featured in Hot Rod Magazine. There's a video of it on youtube

Oh and if anyone feels like posting screencaps of any area of Valencia Ranch or emailing them to me conalldoherty06@gmail.com it would be much appreciated!!

[CARLOS-ARGENTINO]

It's great to see all the effort and enthusiasm that the members of hazzard net to put you post, for example it is magnificent.

Thank you very much for sharing.

hug.

[CDoherty95]

In this next post I'm going to concentrate on the Hazzard County Impoud Yard/Tom Sarmento's shop. It's labeled as "2" on the map.

This first picture is a behind the scenes picture,taken at the gate of the lot.

Although the barn isn't included in this shot you can see the shadow of it in the right corner.

This next shot is taken from the newspaper article about the 1991 deal. I'm sorry for the poor quality,but it's the best version I could find.

This next picture is one I found on CGLFC. It was posted by a member who goes by the name of Corndog. Perhaps he is on HNet as well?

The Lee on the right is the "Soundstage Lee" and the Lee on the left is the "Billboard Lee". This is one of the last photos of the ranch that I could find before it fell into disrepair.

This picture is one I found on the Smith Brothers Restoration site. On the left is the late Rich Sephton, and on the right is Tom Sarmento.

Behind the hill in the background is the I-5 and to the right is where the Duke Farm (1) once stood.

[CDoherty95]

This is a behind the scenes photo of the 2 car jump in the Hazzardgate Tape. This was taken to the left of the impound yard,infront of the Capitol City Junkyard.

Being early on in season 5,the ranch was still being developed,and as you can see from the aerial photo from 1980 it was a barren lot.

Here's a shot of Ted Barbara jumping the roadrunner in "The New Dukes". Apparently the run up was very short and he needed nitrous oxide. Ted would have used the area in the first picture as his run up.

These are all photos that I've found on the web. If someone could post or email me a few screencaps of the Impound Yard and Duke Farm it would be much appreciated. My email address is conalldoherty06@gmail.com

Finally I'd like to thank Hoss for providing me with an edited version of the labelled map.

Hopefully this new map will be clearer and easier to understand

[CDoherty95]

Here's a couple of shots of the Duke Farm post Dukes.

I'd just like to thank BrianColtrane for providing me with the screencaps

This first shot is of the Duke Barn. It was taken from the corner of the farmhouse

As you can see the doors are shut (as far as I know this only happened once during the series,in the episode Limo 1),and the hay bales present in every episode are gone,as is the white fence that separated the hay bales from the farmyard. This is purely speculation,but I believe the fence and hay bales are missing because the bad guys truck needed to circle the whole house.

This next shot might bring a tear to your eye (it did to mine anyway). Imagine what poor Jesse would say if he found out his house was set on fire by Universal Studios!!

Here's a shot taken moments previously,which shows the farmhouse wearing a light yellow coat of paint

Any eagle eyed fans will notice that the wall seen just inside the door during Dukes is gone,and we can see right through to the other side of the house.

This shot leads me to believe that the farmhouse was also used for some interior shots during Dukes

You've just got to imagine that the big empty space infront of Hasslehoff was once two bedrooms,and at the left side of this shot was where the closet where Boss hid in during "Ding Dong The Boss is Dead"

[Brian Coltrane]

I'm impressed! You put a lot of work into this. Between you and Hoss there are some great details here.

I've got a question for ya'll, and maybe it's already been answered in a thread and evades my memory. But has anyone figured out the location of the racetrack used in a couple of Dukes eps? I think the same track was used in "Hazzard Connection" and "Carnival of Thrills". I believe it was also used in a Knight Rider episode called "Slammin' Sammie's Stunt Show Spectacular."

I'm curious if it was/is an actual operating race track, or if it was just a temporary studio set. Sorry I can't remember, I'm usually doing my HNet rounds very late at night and my brain is off-duty.

[HossC]

I've got a question for ya'll, and maybe it's already been answered in a thread and evades my memory. But has anyone figured out the location of the racetrack used in a couple of Dukes eps? I think the same track was used in "Hazzard Connection" and "Carnival of Thrills". I believe it was also used in a Knight Rider episode called "Slammin' Sammie's Stunt Show Spectacular."

I don't know about the Knight Rider location, but the racetrack used several times in Dukes was Saugus Speedway on Soledad Canyon Road in Santa Clarita, CA. I did mention it in passing in the Hazzard Square thread, but it's easy to miss - the post is here, and includes a link for Google Maps. From the research I did at the time I believe it's now used for swap meets.

[CDoherty95]

Knight Rider and Dukes seemed to share quite a few locations. I found a clip of the episode where Valencia ranch is used an it looks like Universal also used the roads around Lake Sherwood. If anyone wants to bust or confirm this theory I'm referring to the end chase scene when KITT is in super pursuit mode and turns into a long driveway.

I think it was used at the start of the Dukes episode "Limo 1" in season 1

I also seem to remember that road being used in season 2 of the Dukes (I can't remember the episode unfortunately) when Enos pulls alongside Rosco and gives him a search warrant. I may be mixing up episodes but I think Rosco then sideswipes Daisy's Satellite.

Does that episode ring a bell with anyone?

[CDoherty95]

Moving onto numbers 3 and 4 in this post,namely the Hazzard Pond and the sawmill/barn.

This first picture was taken during Undercover Dukes and was taken from the east end of the west end of the lake. Can you see those telephone poles in the distance? They're located on the Duke farm.

Here's a shot taken from A Baby For The Dukes. You can see one of the telephone poles in question quite clearly here.

See that lighter shade of green tree in the left background? That tree is located at the little intersection used in countless episodes such a this shot

This is a shot of the aforementioned road,taken from Happy Birthday General Lee. In this shot the camera is positioned at the intersection

[CDoherty95]

This shot shows us Hazzard Pond on the left,and the familiar stretch of road where Rosco usually has a speed trap. Usually when a car would spin out into the lake it would come from the stretch of road seen in this shot

This shot was taken further down the road. Daisy and the General are parked just down from the lake,in an area that was usually used when the boys are running from someone,or going overland to evade Rosco

These pictures were taken from Happy Birthday General Lee. The first one is when the boys first get the charger and are driving back from Capitol City.

In reality they are coming out of the road that seperates the lake from the sawmill

This one is from when the boys are trying to escape from the gold thieves for the first time. In this shot the camera was roughly where the tow truck is in the above picture. See that brush to the left of the General Lee? That's where Daisy and the General Lee hid out in the second picture

[RogerDuke]

You folks do a great job with this thread.

It's one of my favorites.

Thanks for posting this great information and pictures!

[CDoherty95]

In these next few posts I'm going to focus on the area surrounding the Boars Nest (5)

This first picture is taken from Happy Birthday General Lee. The cars are coming from the small barn area (4).

The camera is set up roughly at the intersection of all the roads outside the Boars Nest.

This picture was taken a few frames later. As you can tell,the camera is positioned in the ditch. See the hill in the background? That was where the Dukes left the General to go up to the bad guys hideout in Danger on the Hazzard Express

This next picture was taken from A Baby For The Dukes (credit goes to Hoss for providing the caps)

This is showing the opposite side of the creek,an area rarely seen for some reason. The pole that you see wasn't a prob. It was part of the electricity circuit on Valencia at the time of Dukes. It seems to end here,but perhaps it ended at the Boars

Nest. Remember Valencia was an oil mine in the 1970's so the pole could be a leftover from that time.

This is a shot of the end of the race. You can see the telephone in the right of the picture. It was the same one used in the

previous picture. You can also just make out the Boars Nest. I'll cover the Boars Nest in greater detail in the next post

[CDoherty95]

This is taken from the Boars Nest parking lot. You can see the pole from the previous post to the left of the General Lee. The big barn that you see from time to time is out of frame,but is off to the left of the fencing and pole

This is a wide shot of the area. You can make out the aforementioned barn in the background. See the vehicle in the background? To the right of it is the creek and road mentioned in the previous post

Here's a shot taken from the right of the Boars Nest. You can see the aforementioned road and another long stretch of road. I'll cover that stretch in the next post.

[HossC]

Despite my work on the Hazzard Square thread, I was unfamiliar with the Valencia Oaks Ranch until CDoherty started this thread. That was quite an omission on my part because it is used extensively in later seasons. As I became more familiar with the locations I started collecting some screengrabs, because I'm a great believer in the old adage that "a picture is worth a thousand words". I checked with CD that I wasn't stepping on his toes by posting the pictures I'd collected. To paraphrase the reply, and borrow a term from NASCAR, I was told to "have at it", so here goes.

It was brave of CD to start this topic because the ranches are harder to research than public roads; they tend to have less visual clues to locations other than background hills, and you don't get the benefit of Streetview either. The Valencia Oaks location has also suffered a fire since Dukes was filmed, which has changed the way parts of it look.

Here's a current aerial view of the middle of the ranch. I have used CD's original numbering system for consistency, but have rotated the view by 90 degrees for better clarity (as you can see by the arrow in the top left). Most of the tracks are fairly similar to the way they appeared in Dukes; the only exception I've spotted so far is that there used to be another track to the left of the one that runs between locations 4 and 5. When Dukes was filmed it emerged from the trees near the Boar's Nest; I think CD has already mentioned it and I will cover it later.

This is the view looking west from the Boar's Nest as it appeared in 'The Boar's Nest Bears'. These wider, panorama-style pictures are stitched together from three or four separate screengrabs, which hopefully explains why the moving elements (in this case Bo, Luke and Rod) appear more than once. The trees at the left are near the #6 on the aerial view and the ones in the middle are between 5 and 8.

Moving backwards, but looking in the same direction is this picture from 'When You Wish Upon a Hogg'. I think the hill in the background is the one just to the left of the Boar's Nest entrance in the previous picture. If you look at the pole and fence on the right and then back to the picture of the bad guy up a pole that CD used in post #14 you'll see they are the same. This shot shows how close it was to the Boar's Nest.

Here's a couple more panoramas, this time looking east. The first is from 'Welcome Back, Bo 'n' Luke', and clearly shows that the telgraph poles reach at least as far as the Boar's Nest. In the background you can see a barn and a cylindrical structure, probably a silo or water tower. These are good reference points for other screengrabs, including the one in CD's last post. Just above the yellow Mustang you can see the white fencing that marks one end of the track that has disappeared over the years. The second panorama is from 'The Fortune Tellers', and shows a few more of the surrounding hills. It also shows the start of the track that runs almost perpendicular to the Boar's Nest and goes up the valley.

[HossC]

The directors were very skilled at using different camera angles to make the ranch look bigger than it was. All the pictures in this post are from very near the Boar's Nest, but none give the game away by showing it.

This shot from 'When You Wish Upon a Hogg' shows the track that heads off from the Boar's Nest toward the barn. CD has already posted a shot looking down this track - it's the one looking over the back of Boss's Caddy. Just to the right of the van you can see the telegraph pole from the third picture in the previous post. If you scroll back to that picture you'll see the wooden fence (shown clearly here) is just visible to the right of the General.

Here's another shot from 'When You Wish Upon a Hogg'. This time the camera is further back and the vehicles enter from one of the tracks on the right. The orange bush from the last picture is visible again here. Above it is the brown silo structure. The Boar's Nest car park is behind the bush on the left.

When "Nervous" Norman Willis heads for Hazzard in 'Close Call for Daisy' he's actually only about 100 yards from the Boar's Nest. This is a close-up of the fencing at the start of the track that's disappeared. Just before the camera pans around to this angle you can see the parallel track through the trees.

I apologize for the blurriness of this picture from 'Daisy’s Shotgun Wedding'; I wanted to get it at the last second before they cut to another shot. Now that we're getting familiar with the landmarks, it's easy to recognize the white fence from the previous picture near the left, and the brown silo in the background. In about 150 yards they'd be in the Boar's Nest car park rather than Tennessee!

[HossC]

Moving south from the Boar's Nest (to the left on the recent aerial view) we get to this intersection. If you go back to the aerial view, it's directly above the word "various" in the key. Both the track along the valley and the track just to the left of the General (that leads off up the hill) were used in many episodes; this one happens to be from 'Close Call for Daisy'.

In 'The Ransom of Hazzard County' the General gets taken to the Hazzard Sheriff Impound Yard (at least its third or fourth location!).

I didn't have any idea where it was located until I saw this shot of the hapless guard, Clyde, trying to fix Daisy's Jeep. It's the same intersection and track up the hill that were in the picture before last.

Here's the General making its escape via the conveniently placed car transporter (although strangely it flies right over the truck without touching it!). Despite the growing shadows, it's still possible to make out the trees on either side of the track up the hill.

[CDoherty95]

Great work Hoss! The ranches are generally harder to work on, but I'm quite good at geography so I probably find it a little easier than other people.

I went into the housing development next to the ranch on google street view earlier, hoping to find a break in the houses that would allow me to see the ranch from a different angle. It didn't work, but I did find something a little more significant. As most of y'all know the ranch was sold to a property developer a few years ago, with the hopes of building a large upscale housing development. Well the ranch is for sale again. I spent hours trying to find any information I could on the ranch, like who was selling it and how much were they hoping to get for it etc. Luckily google updated their Valencia street view, and I found this sign outside the ranch.

I googled the name, and it turns out she's selling a 20 acre section of the ranch for $150,000. The section is just north of Tom Sarmeto's garage area.

Hopefully if my singing career works out I can buy the ranch and bring it back to it's Dukes glory days!! Haha

[HossC]

These pictures are from the next track over (to the west) from the previous ones. They're all from 'Cooter's Confession'. The first is another aerial view, and includes three screengrabs along the bottom. I tried doing another panorama, but the camera doesn't move in a straight line, so it didn't work out. The large trees are all in the same places, but some of the smaller ones have come and gone. If you look at the center screengrab you'll notice that the tracks used to form a triangle, although the left side is hardly visible now (the bottom left corner of the triangle would've been just above the #7). As far as I can see, the track going diagonally up and left from the #7 didn't exist when Dukes was filmed. The white fence would've been nearly behind the tree above the #6.

Here's Rosco about to cut off the General at the white fence.

And with Enos behind, the General's blocked in. This camera is looking up the right side of the triangle.

After a bit of ramming, the General makes its escape. Enos got pushed down by the fence (and his car hit the camera - I'm not sure that was meant to happen!), and Rosco nearly got beached on the verge. If the camera had panned left slightly you would've seen the Boar's Nest above the General's roof.

[HossC]

Luke gets attacked nearly opposite the Boar's Nest. This shot shows the General racing down the valley track to help him.

This shot is of the General heading down the hill toward the site of the impound yard (see above). You can see the trees on either side.

The truck is just about to pass the spot where the impound yard entrance was located. From this angle we can see right down that arm of the valley.

A change of camera angle and we can how the intersection looks from above. The truck is now on the track that leads back to the Boar's Nest.

[HossC]

There was a query on the Facebook page earlier today about whether the Boar's Nest appeared in an episode of Knight Rider. It turns out that the Valencia Oaks Boar's Nest did appear in Knight Rider, although with a few cosmetic changes. The episode was called 'Out of the Woods' (S04E14), the same episode that used (and set fire to) the Duke Farm - pictures back in post #7.

The Boar's Nest sign was replaced with one saying "DUTTON INDUSTRIES HUMBOLDT MILL", the entrance was remodeled, a louvred window was added at each side, and there's no sign of any hubcaps!

Here's a close-up of the new entrance showing the familiar tiled sides. It looks like the base of the old entrance was left in place.

All four of the approach roads were used during the episode - this is the one that goes past the barn.

The logging trucks were unloaded in what we know as the Boar's Nest car park. The picture above was taken on the road at the far left of the picture, next to the small shack (which did not appear in Dukes).

[HossC]

If you looked at post #7 you'll already have seen some pictures of how the Duke Farm looked in this episode - here's a few more. The first shows a different angle, looking across the front of the farmhouse.

The only change I can spot at the side of the farmhouse is that the old screens on the back porch have been replaced with a white trellis (just above the bed of the truck).

While the bad guys are trying to burn down the farmhouse, we get a view of back walls - an angle I don't remember seeing in Dukes. The picture shows there are no windows on this side, although there is a door on the side of the kitchen.

This close-up gives a better shot of the usually unseen kitchen door.

[HossC]

I'm straying out of Valencia Oaks now, but the same episode also included a couple of other locations shared with Dukes. Several scenes featured these rain-slicked roads running through woodland. The double yellow lines in the center of the road, coupled with the curb on the left, leads me to believe that they were filmed somewhere in Griffith Park, although I didn't get around to finding the exact location.

The Dutton mansion was located on West Potrero Road near Lake Sherwood. Here's Devon and Bonnie's limo approaching from the east.

This is Samantha Dutton's Mercedes entering the main gates. If you check out Google Maps you'll see that 782 West Potrero Road is still recognizable today.

I'll conclude the Knight Rider pictures with a view looking west from the location above. On the left you can see the white fencing that was seen in countless episodes of Dukes. The speed limit at the corner has now been reduced to 25MPH even though the large tree on the right is no longer there.

[RogerDuke]

You always amaze me with your ability to figure all this stuff out Hoss.

Nice job as usual.