Corriganville Group, Officials to Tour Site

Hoping to get the old Corriganville movie ranch restored to its full glory, historians in Simi Valley on Saturday plan to escort members of the City Council and parks board around the 188-acre site.

Their goal: money. It will cost $86,000 to prune the trees, hire a caretaker and buy the picnic tables and portable toilets required to reopen the site as a public park, said David Hugo, a member of the Corriganville Preservation Committee.

The committee will pitch the project to the City Council and Rancho Simi Recreation and Parks District during Saturday’s tour, he said, hoping to persuade each agency to donate 50% of the costs.

In its heyday during the ‘50s and ‘60s, founder and former stuntman Ray “Crash” Corrigan staged gunfights and stunt shows for up to 15,000 visitors a day, and Corriganville once ranked among the top 10 U.S. amusement parks.

From the day it opened in 1937 until the day it closed in 1966 after Corrigan sold the site to Bob Hope, more than 3,500 movies and TV shows were filmed there.

The city and park district bought the ranch in 1988. But today the former western-style town and movie set is little more than stone foundations and brushy slopes, after a 1970 fire and subsequent vandalism destroyed most of the movie sets and buildings.

The Corriganville committee has been trying to woo movie industry moguls to invest in rebuilding the movie ranch, Hugo said. But investors have been leery of putting anything into Corriganville until the park itself is reopened and the city and parks board are behind it, he said.

“There’s a lot of history in trying to get this park opened,” he said. “We’re right on the brink of seeing something happen. You drag some wealthy contributor out there, and they say, ‘What’s the city and the park district doing?’ And we say, ‘Nothing,’ and they say, ‘I’m sorry, we’ll wait.’ ”