‘Motorcycle Cheerleading Mamas’ will not rate as an Iverson movie ranch classic, but it will mark the . . . END of an ERA

It was a wrap for “Motorcycle Cheerleading Mamas.”

And as the whirring cameras shut down on Sunday, the famed Iverson Movie Location Ranch, whose craggy rock formations graced such films as “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” and “The Grapes of Wrath,” shut down with them.

After decades of playing host to Hollywood, the 30-acre ranch has been sold to a Los Angeles couple, who plan to use it as a private residence.

“It was a tough decision to sell,” said Bob Sherman, an Iverson heir who has lived on the ranch since childhood. “I wrestled with it for over five years.”

In its Hollywood heyday, the Iverson Movie Location Ranch served as a backdrop for more than 2,000 film and television productions, including such classics as “Stagecoach,” “Death Valley Days” and “The Lone Ranger.”

Since 1911, directors from Cecil B. DeMille to D.W. Griffith to John Ford have set their films against the sweeping views of the original 2,000-acre ranch nestled in the foothills of the Santa Susana Mountains near the Ronald Reagan Freeway and Topanga Canyon Boulevard.

On Sunday, Sherman finished a nine-day shoot of the low-budget flick he is directing, “Motorcycle Cheerleading Mamas.”

The $15,000 film, an “Ed Wood-style spoof of motorcycle movies of the 1950s and 1960s,” according to producer Mark Headley, features Martin Sheen’s brother Joe Estevez, Robert Mitchum’s son Chris Mitchum and “Grizzly Adams” star Dan Haggerty.

In the movie’s final scenes, several actresses--and one actor--scantily clad in skintight cheerleading outfits tried to rescue two of their cheerleading friends from the clutches of a psychotic film director.

It’s not an adult movie, says Headley, who has also produced films with such titles as “Vampire Bikini Beach” and “Nudist Colony of the Dead.”

“The closest we get to nudity is the cheerleading outfits,” he said.

Not exactly “The Grapes of Wrath.” But the cast and crew were proud to be there, just the same.

“Being out here makes me think about all of the people who went before me,” said lead actress Cheri Rae between takes.

Sherman bought the property, which before World War I was used as a potato farm, from his uncle, Joe Iverson, in 1980.

Originally, it straddled both sides of Topanga Canyon Boulevard, but as interest in western dramas faded in the 1950s, Sherman said, his uncle sold parcels for freeway construction and residential developments and in the 1970s donated some 800 acres to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy.

Although the ranch has sentimental value, Sherman said, its commercial value has dwindled. There isn’t enough space at the ranch for a sound studio, parking or other movie-industry amenities for it to be competitive with filmmaking locations, he said.

“I am geographically landlocked here,” Sherman said. “I can’t expand the business the way I want to. The only way to grow is to go somewhere else.”

Sherman said he hopes to set up production facilities in Jaco Beach, Costa Rica, once the sale goes through.

“I see the film business as pretty developed here in America,” he said. “There is a huge Central American market that is close to home, but untapped.”