Corriganville Park

Today I discovered a fun hike I’m going to share with my husband and kids soon.  Corriganville Park.

“Corriganville Park is an historical 206 acre park named after Ray “Crash” Corrigan, a stuntman/actor who owned the park from 1937 to 1965, when over 3,500 movies, TV shows and commercials were filmed. In 1949, the Corrigan Movie Ranch was opened as a Western-style amusement park with a train ride and stagecoach ride that in the late 1950s had greater weekend attendance than Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm.” from the website

The Corriganville Park “Interpretive Trail” has 20 kiosks giving information about the building of the railroad through Simi Valley, movies made on the site from the 1940’s through the 1970’s, and the natural plant and animal habitat.  It is sooooooo fun!  (And a really easy walk.)

This is a photo of an old movie cave:

This is what it looks like today:

 

Blasting hole from the making of the Simi Valley railroad:

They used to drill these holes in rocks then fill them with explosive powder.  They’d blow the rocks to smithereens to clear space for the railroad.  The Chinese worked hard to build the railroad.  This is where they slept:

This oak grove is also known as “Sherwood Forest” and was used as the set for the 1950’s tv series Robin Hood.

Here is the piece de resistance, the concrete pool:

In this pool was filmed scenes from “Creature From The Black Lagoon”, “Jungle Jim”, and “The African Queen”.  Under the bridge is a concrete room with square windows through which underwater scenes could be filmed.