Mescal, Arizona, located 35 to 40 miles east southeast from Tucson, Arizona, near the town of
Benson, is the home of Old Tucson's second western movie town location, situated on 60 acres
of land which is leased from the Arizona State Land Department. An additional 2,400 acres of
state-owned grazing land surrounds the site.
The town was erected for the 1969 motion picture Monte Walsh starring Lee Marvin. Old
Tucson purchased the site from the CBS network after the completion of filming on the movie.
"We had been quibbling over a $1,000 difference in the price and had finally decided to flip a coin to settle it," said Old Tucson founder Robert Shelton. "It wasn't five minutes later that the restaurant received a call and the employee verified that I was Mescal's new owner and consequently then told me that the sets had been blown down by a wind storm." (Old Tucson Studios Hitching Post, Summer 1992, Vol. 7 No. 3).
Mescal has appeared in Dirty Dingus Magee, The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean and Tom Horn, along with approximately 50 television, motion picture and other productions.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer invested over $200,000 into the sets in 1991 for the third season of the
television series The Young Riders by adding new store fronts, second stories to existing
buildings, and erecting new buildings. In 1992 the town had 32 buildings which included a
schoolhouse, a bank, hotel, church, jail, two-story homes, isolated ranch house, stage station, and
saloon.
At the time the above was written, Mescal was not open to the general public. However, I have been informed that it is now open to the public
when there is no filming.
All of the above photographs are used by permission of Old Tucson Studios and are copyrighted by them.
The following photographs have been submitted by a reader of this web page and are used by her permission.
