MovieChat Forums > The Petrified Forest (1936) Discussion > Doesn't look like Petrified Forrest NP

Doesn't look like Petrified Forrest NP


The backdrop from the café/gas station doesn't look anything like the actual Petrified forest near Holbrook, AZ. The area isn't nearly as hilly, but then the film was shot entirely in California. Black Mesa is a real place and almost as hilly as the backdrop, but it's not in the thick of the Petrified Forest although there may be some petrified wood there. Black Mesa is about a hundred miles north of Petrified Forest National Park (more if you're not a crow).

Oops! Just noticed something really absurd--a saguaro cactus painted on a backdrop! There are none in Northern Arizona where the altitude just about everywhere is at least a thousand feet above their range. Saguaros disappear abruptly after you leave Black Canyon City, only fifty miles north of downtown Phoenix.

--
Drake

FYI



[spoiler][/spoiler]

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They threw in some other geographic descriptions that did not make much sense either if they were indeed in the general vicinity of what is now that National Park. The town where Mantee's girlfriend was caught was a couple of hundred miles to the southwest---nowhere near close on those dirt roads--and after what is only a couple of moments after Mantee leaves and the father calls into the Flagstaff police only to hear the gang's been taken; Flagstaff is a couple hours away even on the interstate nowadays. Route 66 would have existed back then but they showed folks driving on the dirt roads.

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Supposedly, they were 200 miles from Phoenix based on what Gabbie told the Chisholms.

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