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In October 2001, Mike & I kayaked from Navy Beach to Paoha Island on Mono Lake.  It took us a couple hours of paddling across “open ocean” to get to the island.  The whole time, you’re aiming for the island, you’re staring at the island, and you kind of get this image of Paoha burned into your brain, if not your retinas. The day after I got back home, I decided to just kick back, take it easy, and watch TV.  Flipping the channels, I came across the Clint Eastwood classic “High Plains Drifter” just starting.  It had been a while, so I didn’t remember a lot of details of the movie. 

Now, Mike had commented to me several times on our various trips that in the early 1970s his brother was driving along Highway 395 and looked over at the western shore of Mono Lake to see a town sitting there.  This town had not been there earlier.  And even more odd, the entire town was painted red.  Later, when “High Plains Drifter” came out in the theaters, it all made sense to him. 

Knowing this, and just coming back from our kayak adventure at the lake, made me want to watch the movie even more.  It didn’t take long for me to realize that the location of the fictitious town of Lago/Hell was pretty close to where we had started kayaking from (Navy Beach)–because in many of the scenes in the movie, there was Paoha Island in the background, just as it had been burned into my brain/retinas two days before!

This got me to thinking…would it be possible to locate the EXACT spot where the movie was filmed?  Presumably the filming took place under a special use permit (from the Bureau of Land Management?) that required them to completely clean up after themselves when they were done.  But surely, if one found the exact spot, one would be able to find some traces of the movie set?  Maybe some small scrap of wood with faded red paint on it?  Maybe some charred wood from when they burned much of the town down at the end of the movie? 

First I investigated the water level.  After all, the water level at Mono Lake has changed dramatically over the years–in fact, it has actually risen in the last few years.  “High Plains Drifter” was filmed along the shore.  Could the movie set be underwater now?

Looking at historic water levels, compared to the current water level, I determined that the water level in the early 1970s was almost identical to the water level today.  So there was hope.

Next, I watched the movie on my computer, and took screen shots of several key scenes.  An early shot, of Eastwood’s character descending a small hill towards the town, had several key features that might help for reference purposes–most notably, a straight dirt road cutting across the entire frame, and a smaller dirt road winding down to the town from the right hand of the frame. 

 

Clint Eastwood (”The Stranger” or “The Man with No Name”) descending towards Lago / Hell on the south shore of Mono Lake. Paoha Island is visible in the background. Notice the dirt road running left to right, and the small squiggly dirt road in the lower right.

I then opened ESRI’s ArcGIS Explorer software (free download) and zoomed in to the southwest shore of Mono Lake.  My guess, based on the angle of Paoha Island, was that the location was somewhere between the town of Lee Vining and the South Tufa Preserve–about 5 to 6 miles of coastline. 

Within 5 or 10 minutes of scanning the coastline, I identified two likely spots.  After changing the angle of view a few times, I had located the EXACT spot where the movie was filmed.  While the first screen shot turned out to be the only one needed, I spent the next hour going through another dozen screen shots from the movie just to verify it was the right place.  At this point, I was 99.9% sure it was the right spot. 

Image from ArcGIS Explorer. The small squiggly dirt road in the lower right is not as distinct, but it’s there. The point in the middle of the coast in not visible in the scene from the movie, because it’s hidden behind the town. But the white outcrop is clearly visible behind the town.

On Septermber 14th, 2007, I visited Mono Lake to ground truth my theory.  It was surprisingly easy to find the small dirt road that lead to (and through) the mythical town of Lago.  Even more suprising, the road was actually open to vehicles! 

Expecting to have to park the car and walk “in to town”, I was able to drive halfway in my four wheel drive until a big nasty sandy spot stopped me in my tracks.  Parking my car, I noticed several modern artifacts around me (broken car jack, shredded wheel well lining) suggesting that I had made the right decision to park and walk the rest of the way in.

Incidentally, it turns out that I parked the car almost exactly where the famous “Lago/Hell” town sign had been posted almost 35 years ago for the filming of the movie.

 

 Welcome to Lago.

Funny, It doesn’t look like hell…

Mike, who wanted more than anything to go on this trip with me but had to stay behind and work, predicted “You’re going to find the site, but they’re won’t be anything there.”  Well, the ground wasn’t exactly littered with wood painted with faded red paint. 

But there were a few scraps of wood here and there.  Further inspection revealed a number of small pieces of wood that were half-burned.  Concrete evidence that the sleepy little town of Lago had in fact been consumed by the flames of hell! 

Wide spot in the road: downtown Lago then… 

…and downtown Lago now. 

Poking through the sagebrush a little more, I started to notice many hundreds of rusted nails.  And broken glass everywhere!  But not the usual broken glass you find in the desert–rounded pieces of brown and green glass from broken beer bottles.  No, this was all clear glass, flat and thin–window glass.  Yes, High Plains Drifter was a Western.  A lot of glass gets broken in a Western, what with all the bullets–and cowboys–flying through windows.  Thousands of small fragments of glass were poking through the pumice sands of Lago. 

A couple more scraps of wood, these near the old cemetary.

Another thing that’s changed in the 35 or so years since the movie was filmed: we now have cell phones, and contrary to popular belief you can actually get a signal in Hell.  The Devil in me fired up the Blackberry and emailed Mike several times describing the town and the artifacts I was finding.  Poor Mike, sitting in a meeting in Orange County, hearing me brag about what I was seeing. 

So where’s the map, you ask?  How can I find Lago? 

Sorry, I’m not going to publish a road map with driving directions to Hell for you.  The road to Hell is not paved… Download the software yourself, and start poking around.  Come on, where’s your sense of adventure? 

          

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 16th, 2007 at 1:42 am and is filed under Grab Bag. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.