Alamo Village facts for kids
Alamo Village is a special place in Texas, United States, where movies were filmed. It's also been a fun tourist attraction. You can find it north of a town called Brackettville.
This was the very first movie set ever built in Texas! It became famous as the main place where the movie The Alamo (1960) was filmed. A famous actor and director named John Wayne made this movie. He also starred in it, along with Richard Widmark, Laurence Harvey, and Frankie Avalon.
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History of Alamo Village
The movie set was built by a man named James T. "Happy" Shahan. He owned a ranch near Brackettville. In 1995, the Governor of Texas, George W. Bush, even called him the "Father of the Texas movie industry."
Happy Shahan started building the set on his ranch in September 1957. John Wayne had wanted to make a movie about the Battle of the Alamo for many years. He finally started his own movie company, Batjac Productions, to do it. Filming for The Alamo began in August 1959.
Building the Movie Set
At first, the movie set was only going to be the front and sides of buildings. But John Wayne ran out of money and stopped construction. Happy Shahan agreed to keep working if Wayne would build full buildings. This meant they would have four walls, a floor, and a roof. Wayne agreed, and the work continued!
The set is a full-size copy of the Alamo compound. It looks just like it did in 1836. The real Alamo is now in the middle of Downtown San Antonio and surrounded by tall buildings. The set also includes a copy of the village of San Antonio de Béxar from the same time.
Building this set was a huge job! They used over 1.5 million special adobe bricks, which were made right there. They also built 14 miles of gravel roads and a 4,000-foot runway.
Alamo Village as a Filming Location
After the 1960 movie The Alamo was finished, Happy Shahan kept the set. Over the years, more than a dozen movies about the Alamo were filmed there. Also, over 100 other western movies, plus documentaries, music videos, and commercials, used parts of the set.
A film expert named Frank Thompson noticed something cool. Each time a movie was made, the set changed a little bit. These changes show how ideas about what the Alamo looked like have changed over time. The 2004 Disney movie about the Alamo was not filmed here. It used a new set built in a different town.
Alamo Village as a Tourist Attraction
After the first The Alamo movie, the village became a popular place for tourists to visit. For many years, it was a big part of the local economy in Brackettville.
Besides the Alamo copy, the village had many fun things. There was a restaurant, a trading post, an Indian store, a church, and even a jail. You could also see a blacksmith shop and the John Wayne Western Museum. There were other museums and a gallery with pictures of famous people.
Alamo Village also had old tools, vehicles, and movie props. They even had a herd of longhorn cattle! In the summer, you could enjoy live music and stage shows. Over Labor Day weekend, horse races brought many people to the village. Alamo Village was open to visitors most of the year.
Closure and Reopening
In 2004, the owner, Virginia Shahan (Happy Shahan's wife), put the set up for sale. She passed away in 2009. Alamo Village then closed to the public for a while. Her family needed to decide if they could keep it open during a tough economic time.
Alamo Village briefly reopened after Virginia Shahan's death. But then, her daughter, Tulisha Shahan Wardlaw, also passed away in September 2009. After that, Alamo Village closed its doors and took down its website. It felt like the end of an era.
The site opened again for a short time in the summer of 2010. It had limited hours and no shows or stores. But it closed again within a few months. A businessman from Corpus Christi, Texas, was trying to buy the site.
After being closed for eight years, the site opened briefly in January 2018. This was possibly for the last time. It was a sale where they sold off all the old movie props. At that time, no one knew what the future of the site would be.
Selected Movies Filmed at Alamo Village
Many movies and TV shows have been filmed at Alamo Village, including:
- The Alamo (1960) - Directed by and starring John Wayne
- Two Rode Together (1961) - starring James Stewart
- Bandolero! (1968) - starring James Stewart, Raquel Welch, and Dean Martin
- Barbarosa (1982) - starring Willie Nelson
- Good As Gold (1983 music video) by Red Rockers
- Uphill All the Way (1986)
- Gone to Texas aka Houston: The Legend of Texas (1986)
- The Alamo: Thirteen Days to Glory (1987)
- Alamo: The Price of Freedom (1988) - Imax movie
- Lonesome Dove (1988) (TV show) - starring Robert Duvall
- Travis (1991) (film/video) - starring Benton Jennings
- Bad Girls (1994)
- Once Upon a Time in China and America (1997) - a Chinese martial arts western
- Bullfighter (2000)
- Jericho (2000)
- Call of the Wildman (2013)
