Old West Set’s Owner Wins His Battle, but Cost Is a Killer

The forces of law and order appear finally to have put an end to gunfights and barroom brawls in the Old West town that was once home to television’s Wyatt Earp and Marshal Matt Dillon.

Tony Stimolo, owner of what he says is one of Southern California’s last privately owned Western movie sets, won his latest battle with disgruntled neighbors over film making on his rustic Box Canyon property.

But he may well have lost the war.

Ventura County officials Wednesday decided Wednesday that, if Stimolo wants to continue renting out his 18-building movie set at the Bell Movie Ranch, he will have to widen the nearly one-mile stretch of private road that serves the ranch and its 13 neighbors.

But that requirement will turn the ranch into a ghost town, Stimolo complained.

“It’s going to cost $500,000,” said Stimolo. “I will have to shut it down.”

Stimolo, who retired after working as a carpenter for several movie studios, built the Western-style set that has been used for television and movies since the early 1950s. In the heyday of TV Westerns, the Bell Movie Ranch was used as a set for such series as “Gunsmoke,” “Bat Masterson” and “Wyatt Earp,” he said.

But he rented out the ranch only 19 days last year, he said, at rates in the neighborhood of $1,000 a day.

The six-acre property about two miles south of the Simi Valley Freeway near the border of Los Angeles and Ventura counties is in an area no longer zoned for such commercial use.

Last fall, after Stimolo applied to renew a special county operating permit, neighbors complained to officials that convoys of large studio trucks and equipment going to and from the movie set create noise and safety problems along the privately built Studio Road, which is only 12 feet across in places.

At a hearing of the county Environmental Review Report Committee, officials unanimously agreed to approve a renewal of Stimolo’s permit, on condition that he widen Studio Road to 20 feet to accommodate emergency vehicles, such as fire engines.

Not only would the cost of the widening be too much for him, Stimolo said, but he doubts that his neighbors will give up the parts of their property he would need.

“If only one neighbor does want to provide an easement, then that condition will be impossible,” said Gene L. Hosford, a planning consultant who represented Stimolo at the hearing.

Stimolo said he will decide in the next 10 days whether to appeal the road-widening requirement to the Ventura County Board of Supervisors. In the meantime, Ventura County Associate Planner James Caruso said, Stimolo will have until the end of May to shut down his movie set.