As I watch old westerns on television, I am a little frustrated that our area is never represented accurately. Then again, I grew up on Gunsmoke on the radio and television. My father, who was raised back in Maryland had a different problem. My mother, however, had been across Kansas all of her life. When they filmed Gunsmoke it was done up in north central California and that does not look at all like the Dodge City area. As a kid I was a bit disappointed at the Dodge City “Front Street” Museum.

Now that I am a historian I have a similar point of view but am more accepting of the stories. Recently there has been a movie called “Cripple Creek” on TV. That one I saw as a kid in a local movie theater but, that was long ago. The movie Cripple Creek bears no relation to our Cripple Creek. First of all, it is supposedly in the early 1880’s. They do periodically refer to names from our Cripple Creek and that it is a gold mining camp, but that is it. I have seen some that use Leadville, even Denver as possible locations. Those get to be worse as to accuracy.

I have been to Silverton many times, and that area fares no better. I even saw how they “fixed up” Silverton to make it look older in a couple movies. The movie companies did manage to save some of the empty old buildings. I do not think the old railroad station would have survived without movies. One of my favorites is “Ticket to Tomahawk” which is quite fanciful. At the end of the movie you see a train leave town going north, but the track does not go more than a mile that way!

Then we have modern, made for TV movies like “The Incident” with Walter Mathau. It was filmed around Colorado Springs in the 80s. Or there is “One Minute to Zero” a Korean War movie filmed here. Cheyenne Mountain stands in for Korean mountains! Well, I am getting off my intended subject. Sometimes even Gunsmoke makes a mistake I find curious. I remember in one episode when Marshal Dillon was going to contact Fort Carson for something.