Old Tucson is a real Western town, built for the movies in 1939 and never torn down. Hundreds of films and TV shows were shot on its streets — John Wayne made four of them here. Today it's part film location, part theme park, on 300 acres of Sonoran desert owned by Pima County.
Its operator leaves in 2027. We're a Tucson group putting together a community-backed plan for what happens next — and we'd like your ideas in it.
Columbia Pictures needed an 1860s Tucson for a film called Arizona. Rather than fake it on a soundstage, they built one — more than fifty buildings in forty days, on county land twelve miles west of town. Then they left it standing.
Hollywood kept coming back — nearly 300 productions we can name so far. Rio Bravo, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, El Dorado, The Outlaw Josey Wales, Three Amigos!, Little House on the Prairie, Gunsmoke, Tombstone. Each production left buildings behind, so the town grew film by film. John Wayne alone made four pictures here.
It opened to the public — a working studio you could walk around in, with stunt shows and gunfights staged in the street. For a while it was the second most visited attraction in Arizona, after the Grand Canyon.
A fire took a quarter of it. Twenty-five buildings, the costume collection, the memorabilia, and the sound stage. It was rebuilt, but film production never fully returned.
Pima County owns the land, the buildings and the name. An operator runs it seasonally — a big Halloween event called Nightfall, a Christmas one called Yuletide, tours year-round. That operator's lease ends in 2027, and the county is deciding what comes next.
That's where we come in. We're an independent, Tucson-rooted group — not the current operator, not the county — building a community-backed proposal: film production back on the lot, year-round programming instead of two good months, artists and trades paid to work here, and a real voice for the people who grew up with the place.
Novelty isn't enough anymore. A ride, a show, a photo op — it has all been done, and it is all competing with the phone in your pocket, which holds everything and never runs out. You cannot out-spectacle the internet. The theme park model is dying on that arithmetic, and it has already died here twice: the last operator closed these gates in 2020, the current one leaves in 2027.
So we offer what a screen can't — and then we film it. A real town you can walk into. People who know your name. Things you can pick up, choices that change what happens next, trouble you can get into. You leave with a story that happened to you. And because this is a working studio, that story can be shot, cut and shown.
That takes a personal touch, not an org chart and a spreadsheet. Crews who live twenty minutes away. A town run by people who love it, because that is the only way this kind of place has ever worked.
And the Western is due. It's the one film genre America invented, and it carried a golden age of movies and television before we let it go quiet. We think it can come back. It just needs to come home.
Before any talk of reimagining: an honest accounting. Plenty of Old Tucson works beautifully — because of the people who make it. The plan starts by protecting that, and builds only where the town sits quiet.
Everything in the working column stays sacred. Around that core, here's what we'd add — growing the town into something no place else on earth can be.
Revive the working studio: productions, soundstages, and a new generation of Western filmmaking — with a training pipeline for local crews.
Quarterly music and arts gatherings under the desert sky — from intimate nights in the Grand Palace to full-grounds festival weekends.
Step into the story: immersive Western adventures, characters who remember you, and the stunt craft Old Tucson is famous for.
Studios, workshops, and storefronts where working artists build the town's next layer — and teach the crafts that built the West. Artists are paid here, as policy.
Youth and adult education in film craft, stunts, horsemanship, blacksmithing, carpentry, and performance — heritage trades, living wages.
We aim to structure this as a benefit corporation — a company legally accountable to Tucson's benefit, not just a bottom line — where the crew and community have a genuine voice in how the town is run.
Collaborators, creators, advisors, and partner organizations joining the effort. This board fills up as conversations become commitments — check back.
Artistic Director, Jolly Productions
Twenty years building for theater, film & TV, and live events — rigging, fabrication, production, design, and performance for high-profile clients across the industry. Shapes the work and the world it lives in. soldati.rocks
Founder & Executive Director, Jolly Productions
Born and raised in Tucson — the connector. Years of building community among artists, performers, promoters and gatherings across the West, and the reason half this town already knows about the project. @jojofromtucson
Our founding show: a no-cash, bartered-blackjack comedy experience played at Burning Man, Bonnaroo, Lightning in a Bottle, Electric Forest and Meow Wolf. Proof we build joyful worlds people step into. frickfrackblackjackwest.com
The best way to understand this project is to walk the streets. Old Tucson is 20 minutes from downtown, past Gates Pass in Tucson Mountain Park — go for a tour, stay for the sunset.
Fly into Tucson International (TUS) — the park is ~30 minutes from the airport and downtown. Rental car recommended; the Gates Pass drive at golden hour is itself worth the trip.
Desert lodges & resorts on the west side: JW Marriott Starr Pass, White Stallion Ranch, Tanque Verde Ranch, Casino del Sol, plus downtown's Hotel Congress. Partner lodging packages coming as the project grows.
Pair your visit with the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum and Saguaro National Park West — Old Tucson's neighbors in one of the most beautiful desert valleys on earth.