The Old Fake Town, It Ain’t What It Used to Be . . .

As time drifts past with the tumbleweeds, Callahan’s Old West, a make-believe ghost town, is turning into the real thing. It was built on Sierra Highway near Newhall in 1965 by the late Robert Callahan, a writer of Western fiction and history. Callahan survived a freight train hitting his Cadillac shortly after the town opened, but died later that year of pneumonia. For a while, Old West was open to the public and performers put on Western skits, mixing history and gun smoke. Old West is closed now but is sometimes used as a set by film companies.