Pioneertown Opens At Desert Sunday

By auto caravan and special plane, Hollywood celebrities will arrive at the townsite of Pioneertown this coming Sunday for ground breaking exercise.

This new town will rise in the San Bernardino mountains just 20 miles from Big Bear Valley and 35 miles from Palm Springs. Elevation here is 4000 fee. Pioneertown is reached by driving up the Victorville Road from Yucca Valley.

An invitation to all residents of this area to attend the ceremonies has been extended by Dick Curtis, president and general manager of the Pioneertown Land Corporation. Contrary to rumors, Curtis stated that Pioneertown is not a closed corporation and that residents of this area are invited to participate.

Roy Rogers, Martha Vickers, Janis Paige, Gene Kelley, Yvonne De Carlo, “The Sons of the Pioneers,” “Lucky” Hayden, and a number of other screen stars and film executives, and representatives of San Bernardino County officials interested in the town will be on hand to run bulldozers and other equipment which will launch the preliminary part of a ten million dollar expenditure over a five-year period.

Pioneertown will serve both as a resort area and location spot for the filming of outdoor movies. Auto and other “newfangled” inventions are to be taboo on the surface. Western on the outside, but twentieth century within its compound, a typical “out-west” hotel and restaurant is first on the construction list. Thousands of dollars more will insure a traditionally western express office, saloon, grocery, blacksmith’s shop, drug store, bank and livery stable, etc.

Aug. 30, 1946 - The Grizzly clipping