Vasquez Rocks appearances

There are enough in the guest stars thread, I figured they might as well have their own.

The rocks are the title location of "Mountain Fortress", the first episode of the first hour-long regular TV Western, Cheyenne, premiering Sept. 20 1955. Before the fort was built, I believe. The reverse angles from the mountain are vast plains of Warner Bros. stock footage.

Cheyenne (Clint Walker) and Smitty (L.Q. Jones) check the spot from the trail.


Classic Western heavy Bob Wilke is already there.


James Garner shows up.


The rocks get a beauty shot at the close of the episode.

 

Even Bill and Ted visited Vasquez Rocks...

 

Along with an unfortunate slur...

Watch out for Zanti's...


Or weird spheres of the 25th Century.

 

In a backdroppy kinda way.

The films often make the rocks seem smaller than they actually are. When you climb up them you get a sense of the actual scale.

 

Once I started to notice things from a film making prospective, I assumed the formation was actually smaller than it often appeared on camera. But as Maurice noted, it's the opposite, it's considerably larger than one expects!

At SketchFab, there is a 3D models of the region you can download and use in various digital modeling and rendering suites. It was generated by a process called photogrammetry. But you can view it "online" without the need of tools like Blender, Maya, Lightwave, etc.

SketchFab Vasquez Formations

You can get a better sense of the true scale because the image capturing process also recorded the vehicles that were in the area.They look rather like "melted" sculptures, but are easily identified. Then the sense of scale really hits you! Those upper peaks give me a "whiff" of vertigo, and that's just the model!

 

By which time the Rocks had somehow migrated to the outskirts of Chicago.

 

This Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers video was in heavy rotation in the early days of MTV. One of the first I remember that had a "plot," though unrelated to the song lyrics. A car from the Logan's Run series also appears.

 

Now, I’ve often wanted to have a mirror of that...and do a taffy-pull making a “temple” with the layers forming a steeple.

I rotated it around and looked down it’s slanted spine...and it looked a bit like a layered asteroid Ouamuamua deal...this can be used and still look fresh as long as you don’t use that one same angle.

The sphere was positioned perfectly to block the iconic part.

 

Oh, yeah, at the beginning there. It's a repaint of a Sandman Ground Car, built by Dean Jefferies. (Or maybe it's just covered in dust?) Apparently the Ground Cars showed up in a lot of places after the show ended, even in Spaceballs.

 

Yeah I think just really dusted up, the Sandman markings are still visible.

 

I gather they even showed up on an episode of "CHIPS" with a chick in a runner costume.

Scott Kellogg

 

^I have that!

 

"Chick". How appropriately 70s.

 

Keeping it in the MGM-TV family, I guess.

The Virginian didn't often stray from Universal, but once in a while they did.

"The Payment", 1964.

 

Yeah, my daughter and I climbed them a couple years ago. From a distance, you can't even understand how people get up there. But it was relatively easy once we started.

It was a hell of a nuclear war...

 

Vasquez Rocks is sentient silicon based lifeform that is actually mobile. (and space faring)