Go Behind the Scenes at These Fascinating Movie Locations in the West

When the Academy Awards are doled out on March 15, One Battle After Another is almost guaranteed to take home a few. The film, which snagged four of the top awards at the Golden Globes, is a complex comic thriller about a family of revolutionaries. It’s also a remarkable travelogue of California locations not usually seen on the silver screen.

Of course, the West has a long, rich history in movies. There’s a trove of fabulous films that were shot in Arizona, Utah, Montana, and other states in the region, and many of these locales offer unique sightseeing possibilities for cinephiles. So set your DVR—then hit the road—to see these classic and contemporary movie locations.

California 

One Battle After Another

Writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson began filming his epic in the northernmost parts of California. Locations in Humboldt County represented the fictional Baktan Cross, a sanctuary city where Leonardo DiCaprio’s character (Bob Ferguson) lives under an assumed identity. Eureka High School provides a realistic setting for a school dance and a parent-teacher conference, thanks to Cassandra Hesseltine of the Humboldt-Del Norte Film Commission. (Hesseltine also recommended a local actress, Tisha Sloan, who played the teacher.)

Murphy’s Market, at 4020 Walnut Drive in Eureka, was the backdrop for a scene where Bob makes an exasperated call from a pay phone. Don’t try to take a selfie at the phone—it was a prop installed by production—but the store is open, so feel free to pick up a deli sandwich. After lunch, head to the Redwood Coast Museum of Cinema, which has added a One Battle After Another section (next to its most famous exhibit, about the Endor sequences in Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi).

One Battle After Another’s downtown bank robbery and car chase scene, meanwhile, was filmed in Sacramento. The exterior, foyer, and hallway of Ronald Reagan’s former mansion at 1341 45th St. serve as the meeting spot of the insidious Christmas Adventurers Club, an evil cabal calling the shots in U.S. politics.

But Southern California provided the film’s most memorable visuals: Highway 78, east of Borrego Springs in San Diego County, was the setting for the film’s climax—one of the most thrilling car chases in Hollywood history. The production team referred to the road as “the river of hills,” a spot Anderson and his team found after years of searching for an ideal location. The scene’s showdown takes place on the edge of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, which offers hikes with stunning vistas, and opportunities to spy roadrunners, golden eagles, rattlesnakes, and bighorn sheep (or borrego).

The Birds

Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 thriller features a stunning natural landscape thanks to the Northern California coast. After a brief introduction in San Francisco, The Birds sees star Tippi Hedren driving north to Bodega Bay for romantic intrigue and suspense, as killer birds descend on the scenic coastal town to wreak havoc. Early in the film, the titular terrors surround a schoolhouse filled with young children, waiting to strike as the students exit the school grounds. More than 60 years later, the real Potter Schoolhouse is the last remaining structure from the film, and it’s a private residence now, so don’t go ringing the bell—but it’s a must-see for Hitchcock fans driving by. Visit Sonoma County’s website about the film for information.

Arizona

Edge of Eternity

Long before directing Clint Eastwood in the San Francisco Bay Area classics Dirty Harry and Escape From Alcatraz, Don Siegel shot a CinemaScope stunner in the Grand Canyon National Park. Edge of Eternity is a taut Western featuring incredible footage of the natural wonder, including a climactic fistfight on a long-gone cable car system that went from one side of the canyon to the other. The cable car at Guano Point was built by the U.S. Guano Corp., which hoped to excavate tons of bat waste to make fertilizer. The efforts were a bust—only a tiny fraction of guano was excavated and a low-flying Air Force jet snapped the cable, which was never repaired—but the film still exists in all its jaw-dropping glory. Other scenes feature a courthouse and additional locations in and around adjacent Kingman, Arizona.

Montana

The Revenant

The Revenant, a violent Western set in the wilderness of Montana and South Dakota in the early nineteenth century, won Leonardo DiCaprio his only Oscar—as of this writing. Much of the film’s opening section was shot in Canada, but a key sequence takes place at Kootenai Falls, a free-flowing waterfall near Libby, Montana. The falls, which you can hike to, are a sacred site to the Kootenai Tribe, and the region is also a great place to spot white-tailed deer, bighorn sheep, and bald eagles. Director Alejandro G. Iñárritu planned to shoot the film’s final section in Canada, but a lack of snow forced the production to relocate to Tierra del Fuego, Argentina. 

Oregon

Stand by Me

Rob Reiner’s 1986 classic Stand by Me, adapted from a Stephen King story, was filmed in the northernmost parts of California and Oregon. Brownsville, Oregon played the role of the fictional town of Castle Rock (a frequent location in King’s tales). With a story set in 1959 and a soundtrack packed with jukebox classics, the film tells the story of four boys hiking across Oregon’s backroads while searching for a dead body. Four decades after the nostalgic film’s release, it still connects with audiences.

“I get messages from fans of the movie on social media all the time; they send pictures from the exact locations,” says Jerry O’Connell, who played teenager Vern Tessio in his big screen debut, alongside Wil Wheaton, Corey Feldman, and the late River Phoenix. “It’s so much fun to see people planning vacations around visiting places from Stand by Me.”

Brownsville is a great place to do just that: The downtown area features spots that look just like they did in the film, including Pioneer Park (site of the vomitous pie eating contest), the back alley where Wheaton and Phoenix’s characters fire a handgun, and the street corner where O’Connell’s Vern finds a lucky penny. (City leaders actually embedded a penny in that spot in 2007.) 

Brownsville puts on a daylong Stand by Me celebration every year in late July, and O’Connell hopes to attend with Wheaton and Feldman this year, for what’s sure to be an extra-emotional event given Reiner’s passing in 2025. “It will be great to see the movie on a big screen again, and to be there with a bunch of people who love it,” says O’Connell.

Wyoming

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Steven Spielberg is often credited with bringing back Hollywood’s big-screen magic in the style of epics like The Ten Commandments and Lawrence of Arabia, and this 1977 science fiction masterpiece is among the reasons why. Certainly the film’s conclusion, shot at Wyoming’s Devils Tower National Monument, is as spectacular as any sequence that Hollywood has ever produced, as (spoiler alert!) a massive spaceship appears over Devils Tower to communicate with the human race. The stunning natural rock formation is popular with hikers and rock-climbers, and is considered sacred by Northern Plains tribes, some of whom leave prayer cloths along the popular Tower Trail. (To visit respectfully, let them be.)

Utah

Jeremiah Johnson

The late Robert Redford made many movies in the West—Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Horse Whisperer, and A River Runs Through It, which all beautifully showcase the region’s panoramic vistas. But Redford’s 1972 Western Jeremiah Johnson is landscape filmmaking of the highest order. The film, directed by Sydney Pollack, was shot in more than 100 locations in Utah, and a few more in northern Arizona. Locations in Zion National Park, Ashley National Forest, and Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest are used to spectacular effect, as Redford’s mountain man character goes deeper into the wilderness during this rugged adventure.

Redford would later create the Sundance Institute and Film Festival next to locations used in the film, and the festival has become so popular that it will move to Boulder, Colorado, in January 2027. Meanwhile, the Utah Office of Tourism features a Jeremiah Johnson itinerary—including a visit to Redford’s Sundance Mountain Resort— as the first of seven travel cheat sheets based on famous movies shot in the area. The travel bureau also offers a Robert Redford travel guide, featuring locations from Jeremiah Johnson as well as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Electric Horseman.