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

Regions 8, 9, 10, & 12 Park Cultural Landscapes Program

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. Paramount Ranch is a historic vernacular landscape that is significant at the state level under National Register Criterion A as a representative example of a movie ranch used by the large Hollywood movie studios in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. The ranch has been in continuous use as a film location since it was acquired by Paramount in 1927 and is a tangible link to the Golden Age of Hollywood, which began in the late 1920s with the rise of the studio system. The period of significance extends from 1927 to 1943, which encompasses the years of Paramount Studios’ ownership, development, and intensive use of the ranch and its landscape for on-location filming. Paramount Ranch is significant under National Register Criterion A for its contribution to the motion picture industry. The ranch played a vital role in supporting the studio’s production schedule. In its heyday in the 1930s, Paramount Studios filmed nearly one-fifth of its productions at the ranch and rented the ranch to other film companies as production needs allowed. In August 2021, Rich Freitas (Historical Landscape Architect), Vida Germano (Cultural Landscapes Program Manager), and Stephen Lorber (Historical Landscape Architect Intern) of the NPS regional office, completed an update to the CLI that built upon previous work by Cortney Cain Gjesfjeld (Historical Landscape Architect) and Vida Germano in 2017. As a result of this effort, the landscape description, chronology, physical history, analysis and evaluation--as well as several other database fields--were updated. New site plans were also prepared showing 2021 existing conditions at Paramount Ranch.

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

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