Santa Clarita / Antelope Valley : Cowboy Festival Moves to Melody Ranch

Even an earthquake could not hamper the frontier spirit of the cowboy festival, which city officials announced Monday would move to the historic Melody Ranch Motion Picture Studio in Newhall.

The three-day Cowboy Poetry, Music and Film Festival, which begins March 25, originally was to be held in the Hart High School auditorium, which was severely damaged in the Northridge quake.

The city will pay $15,000 to rent the ranch studio, which was owned by singing cowboy actor Gene Autry until 1990 and has been the set of hundreds of Westerns, including films starring Gary Cooper, Roy Rogers and John Wayne. The set burned down when fire swept through Placerita Canyon in 1962, but has since been restored by brothers Renaud and Andre Veluzat, who purchased the ranch from Autry.

The announcement of a new festival site came as a relief to Cecilia Burda, the city’s special projects manager, who had faced the difficult chore of promoting an event without a location.

She said the new venue actually will add an air of authenticity to Santa Clarita’s first-ever regional event. “This is perfect because it gives us the chance to show off the Old West through the sets of the TV shows and movies that really brought the cowboy to the American home.”

Although the $15,000 cost of renting the studio is considerably more than the $2,000 that the city would have paid for the high school auditorium, the total cost of the event still should not exceed its $83,000 budget, said city spokeswoman Gail Foy. She noted that corporate sponsorships and ticket and merchandise sales would greatly offset the cost to the city.

Tickets for the three-day festival of Western poetry, music and films range from $10 for a poetry pass to $50 for a special weekend package.