Thanks to consistent community effort, Pioneertown’s Historic District has now been added to the National Register of Historic Places, at long last. Reporter Heather Clisby has the details…
It took two years, but Pioneertown’s Historic District has finally earned a coveted spot on the National Register of Historic Places. With funding through Friends of Pioneertown and the Curtis Miller Foundation, the designation for Pioneertown’s Mane Street landed on the register May 26.
Built in 1946 as a film and television set for Westerns, Pioneertown was the vision of famed cowboy actors Dick Curtis, Roy Rogers, Gene Autry and Russell Hayden. Always a full-functioning town even when the cameras were off, Pioneertown saw peak filming in the 1940s and ’50s in shows like “Judge Roy Bean” and “The Cisco Kid.”
With Pioneertown’s beleaguered water system addressed, long-shuttered businesses are looking to reopen in the coming months. The Red Dog Saloon, a famed water hole, and the Pioneer Bowl, where Roy Rogers threw out the first ball, are both being restored.
The National Register provides formal recognition of a property’s architectural, historical, or archaeological significance and requires new projects to consider their impact on historical properties before approval.
