Paramount Ranch: Cultural Landscape Inventory, Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, National Park Service

National Park Service

Paramount Ranch is a rural historic landscape in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, which encompasses 765 acres, comprising the most representative, surviving portion of the approximately 2,400-acre former Paramount Studios Movie Ranch (“Paramount Ranch”). Paramount Pictures, the well-known film studios located in Los Angeles, owned and developed the property between 1927 and 1943 for use as a movie ranch. Movie ranches were properties leased or owned by film studios located outside of urban Los Angeles that provided specific advantages for filming a wide variety of movies, including landscape diversity and an absence of power lines and urban noise that were constraints of the typical urban studio lot. Paramount Ranch once included much of the undeveloped and mountainous terrain that surrounds it, but today these lands predominantly lie outside the park boundaries. However, located within park boundaries are the former ranch operations area, the sites of historic film locations, much of the historic road system, and views to the adjacent hills. Paramount Ranch is bounded on the northeast by Cornell Road and to the southeast by Malibu Creek State Park. To the south are residences along the Mulholland Highway Corridor, and to the west and north are hills that separate the site from residential development along the Kanan Road corridor. The principal landforms within Paramount Ranch are the valley of Medea Creek and the hills to the west of the creek. Medea Creek, which follows a general north-south course in the eastern section of the property, is at an elevation of about 750 feet. Sugarloaf Peak, the largest of the hills on the west side of the creek, reaches 1,515 feet in elevation. A small valley, descending from west to east, runs through the hills along the west side of the ranch toward the center of the property. Paramount Ranch contains typical coastal foothill vegetation communities representative of the Mediterranean climate in California. Shrubland, primarily chapparal, covers nearly two-thirds of the property’s acreage. Along Medea Creek, the riparian vegetation consists primarily of willows with associated forbs and grasses. Oak woodlands are near the watercourses and the dominant species are coast live oak (Quercus agrifolia) and valley oak (Quercus lobata). Oak savannahs, which are grasslands with scattered valley oaks, are also present at the ranch, and they were the principal areas for film production and set construction during the period of significance. The central developed area of Paramount Ranch is located at the intersection of the small valley that trends in an east-west direction and Medea Creek. This is the area where operational support activities were centered during the Paramount era and where several structures were erected over the years. Although none of the studio’s formal administrative functions were housed at the ranch, a 1937 studio-drawn plan of the site refers to this central area as “ranch headquarters.” This document will refer to this area as the “headquarters area” or “ranch core.” Several structures that date from the period of significance (1927-1943) remain extant here, including the movie studio’s mess hall/kitchen building (the Longhorn Building), the Mill/Carpenter Shop, and the Medea Creek Bridge.

Paramount Ranch: Cultural Landscape Inventory, Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, National Park Service

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