Golden Oak Ranch facts for kids
Golden Oak Ranch entrance gate
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| Address | 19802 Placerita Canyon Road, Santa Clarita, California 91321, United States |
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| Status | operating |
The Golden Oak Ranch is a huge piece of land owned by The Walt Disney Company. It's about 890 acres, which is like 675 football fields! This special ranch is used as a filming location and a backlot for movies and TV shows.
You can find the ranch near Newhall, Santa Clarita, California. It's less than an hour's drive north of Los Angeles. The ranch is named after the first discovery of gold in California. This happened years before the famous California Gold Rush. The ranch has open fields, two creeks, a waterfall, and even old Western-style buildings.
Golden Oak Ranch: A Filming Wonderland
The Ranch's Story: How It Grew
Walt Disney Productions first rented some of this land in the 1950s. They used it for the "Adventures of Spin & Marty" parts of The Mickey Mouse Club. In 1959, Disney bought the ranch, which was 315 acres at the time. They paid $300,000 for it.
Over the years, Disney bought more land next to the ranch. This made the Golden Oak Ranch grow to its current size of 890 acres. By 2012, the ranch had new sets built on it. These included a business district with 42 stores and a street with 23 different-looking houses.
In 2013, Disney shared plans to build a new film and TV studio on 58 acres of the ranch. This new area would be called Disney | ABC Studios at The Ranch. It would have six new sound stages and offices for making shows. Los Angeles County approved the project later that year. Construction permits have been extended, showing the project is still in the works.
Movies and Shows Made Here
Many famous movies and TV shows have been filmed at the Golden Oak Ranch. It's a popular spot because it has so many different types of outdoor settings.
Some of the first productions filmed here include:
- Spin and Marty (from The Mickey Mouse Club)
- Zorro
- Toby Tyler (the first movie shot here)
- Old Yeller (most outdoor scenes)
- The Horse in the Gray Flannel Suit (Bolton Estate scenes)
- Roots: The Next Generations (a town was built here)
Other popular films and TV series that used the ranch include:
- The Apple Dumpling Gang
- Mame
- The Muppets
- Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
- Pete's Dragon
- Behind the Candelabra
- Treasure of Matecumbe
- The Cat from Outer Space
- The Muppet Movie
- The A-Team
- The Electric Horseman
- Little House on the Prairie
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer
- Fire Down Below (1997 film)
- Joe Dirt
- The Majestic
- Desperate Housewives (season 8, episode 6)
- Role Models
- Holes
- Camp Nowhere
- The Country Bears
- Westworld (TV show)
- The Dukes of Hazzard
- The Office
The ranch has also been used for commercials, like those for Kentucky Fried Chicken featuring Colonel Sanders. The music video for Jordin Sparks' song Battlefield was also filmed here. A special covered bridge on the ranch was seen in Follow Me, Boys!, episodes of Bonanza, The Greatest American Hero, and various Star Trek series. It was also used for parts of the music video for Amaranth by Nightwish.
The house from the original 1961 movie The Parent Trap was filmed here. So was the Peabody farm from the Universal film Back to the Future. Three of the five Herbie films, including The Love Bug and Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo, used the ranch. In 1985, Big Top Pee-wee and parts of Short Circuit were filmed here.
Scenes from Mad Men, including parts of Don Draper's childhood and Margaret Sterling's hippie commune, were shot at the ranch. The rural farmhouse set, known as "Olivia's House," was used for these scenes. It also served as Dwight Schrute's farm in several episodes of The Office. More recently, the ranch was used for the exterior downtown scenes of WandaVision.
