I'm reading a book from 1914 on the history of Inyo County, California. On the eastern sloaps of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, near Lone Pine, Ca. are a range of hills called the "Alabama Hills". This area is well known in western movies going back to the 1920s. Some of the movies filmed there include ["Tom Mix films, Hopalong Cassidy films, The Gene Autry Show, and The Lone Ranger. Classics such as Gunga Din, Springfield Rifle, The Violent Men (1955 film), Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), the Budd Boetticher/Randolph Scott "Ranown" westerns, part of How the West Was Won, and Joe Kidd."] (wiki). The area is still used in many movies, tv shows and commercials.

Being a South Alabamian I always wondered how this range of hills got its name. Apparently the local miners in the 1860s were Southern and fans of the career of the CSS Alabama named there claim the "Alabama". The name quickly was associated with the hills and rocks of the area and stuck. When the Alabama was sunk, Union miners named their area and geographic points "Kearsarge". But because of the movies the "Alabama Hills" are more well known.

I now have more in common with those hills than I thought, and next time I go there I'll remember its history.

David