Shane | 1953

George Stevens' classic Western makes full use of the location filming around Jackson Hole, at the southern end of the Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming, courtesy of Oscar-winning photography by Loyal Griggs.

Jackson Hole is a 50-mile-long, mile high mountain valley overlooked by the Grand Tetons mountain range.. To the indigenous people of the land the peaks were Teewinot – Many Pinnacles, but French trappers saw them differently, bestowing the current name, which translates as the Big Breasts.

Director Stevens makes the landscape a vital part of the story, and you may wonder why your photos don’t look quite so majestic as the film. Cinematographer Griggs kept the camera well back from the action and used a long lens to close in, flattening the perspective and getting the mighty Tetons to loom so imposingly over the scene. It's the same technique used by Woody Allen to make the Queensboro Bridge dominate the screen in the famous scene from Manhattan.

The filming sites are in the area surrounding the town of Kelly, around 14 miles northeast of Jackson.

The Starrett homestead was built specifically for the film north of Kelly. Follow Lower Gros Ventre Road north to the junction of Warm Springs Road. The site of the cabin was a few hundred yards northwest. It was dismantled after filming so there's little specific to see, as if the magnificent views were not enough.

What does remain is the partially collapsed cabin which belonged to Ernie Wright (Leonard Strong), the neighbour who is being intimidated out of his home. This was a real cabin, built back in the day by a homesteader called Luther Taylor, and was leased to the production company. It's north of Gros Ventre Road about a mile east of the homestead site.

Similarly the local town, where Shane gets so much trouble in the saloon, was built from scratch. This was a few miles north of the homestead, west of Antelope Flats Road. Though that too was dismantled, one of the buildings has been saved but not on its original site.

A little way along the town’s 'Main Street' from the saloon in the film stands a building with a 'Saddles and Harnesses' sign. This has been preserved and now stands on the grounds of the Jackson Hole Historical Society, 105 Mercill Avenue at North Glenwood Avenue in Jackson.

The view seen under the film titles as Shane rides into Jackson Hole is the view point at Teton Pass on Teton Pass Highway, where there’s now the famous “Howdy Stranger, Yonder is Jackson Hole” sign.

For specific details of accessing the sites see the excellent Golden Studios locations site.

The area has been seen in many other films including 1980's Any Which Way You Can, with Clint Eastwood, and Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained.

You can visit Jackson Hole via Route 191 which runs through the valley alongside the Snake River, from Jackson in the north to Yellowstone National Park, or you can fly from several US cities direct to Jackson Hole Airport.

Studio interiors were filmed back at Paramount Studios in Hollywood and it's claimed there was filming at Big Bear Lake in San Bernardino County in California but I can't find any details or confirmation.

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