TLDR: Laramie aired on NBC from 1959 to 1963 and was set in Wyoming Territory, but the entire series was filmed in Southern California.
The Sherman Ranch was built on a studio backlot in Universal City, California. Town scenes used Universal’s Western Street backlot.
Outdoor location work was done at Iverson Movie Ranch in Chatsworth, Vasquez Rocks in Agua Dulce, and Bronson Canyon in Griffith Park.
The cast and crew never once filmed in the real city of Laramie, Wyoming, during the show’s four-year run.
For four seasons, millions of American viewers watched Slim Sherman and Jess Harper defend their Wyoming ranch from outlaws, land grabbers, and assorted frontier threats. The wide-open spaces, the dramatic rock formations, the dusty frontier streets. All of it looked like the American West.
Almost none of it was Wyoming. Most of it wasn’t even close.
Laramie was produced entirely in Southern California. The real city of Laramie, Wyoming, never appeared in a single frame of the show it was named after.
How the Show Was Produced
Laramie was a product of Revue Studios, the television production arm of MCA, which operated out of the Universal Studios lot in Universal City, California.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Revue was essentially a television factory, producing multiple Western series simultaneously on the same stages and backlot streets. Wagon Train, The Virginian, and The Deputy were all being made in the same physical space during overlapping periods.
A typical season of Laramie ran between 28 and 33 episodes, requiring continuous year-round production. Executive producer John C. Champion managed the process through rotating directors and writers, with multiple scripts in development at all times.
In the later seasons, the studio adopted a split-unit system where episodes were designed to be star-centric, allowing two separate crews to film simultaneously on different parts of the lot.
One unit would shoot Robert Fuller’s scenes while another shot John Smith’s, effectively doubling output within the same week.
The Sherman Ranch Was Built Specifically for the Show
The Sherman Ranch and Relay Station, the narrative heart of the series, was a purpose-built set constructed on the Universal backlot.
Unlike generic cabin sets that were recycled across multiple productions, the Sherman Ranch had a distinctive architectural identity: heavy timber framing, a split-level design that allowed for interesting camera angles, and specific functional elements required by the show’s premise as a stagecoach relay station.
The relay station aspect demanded specific details. There was a large barn for changing horse teams, a water trough system, and a front porch wide enough to accommodate the arrival of a full stagecoach and its passengers.
The interior sets were built on Universal soundstages and matched to the exterior architecture, including the large open hearth that served as the household’s center and a bunkroom for the characters Jess Harper and Jonesy.
The set’s appearance evolved across the four seasons to reflect the show’s changing family dynamics. In the first two seasons, with an all-male cast, the dressing was rough and functional. When Spring Byington joined as housekeeper Daisy Cooper in Season 3, the set decorators added curtains, finer kitchenware, and a generally more settled domestic appearance.
The arrival of Dennis Holmes as orphan Mike Williams added a child’s toys and belongings to the mix. The same physical structure quietly told the story of who was living there.
The Town Streets Were Shared With Every Other Western on the Lot
The frontier town scenes in Laramie were filmed on Universal’s Western Street backlot, centered on an area known as “6 Points, Texas.” This was a versatile collection of storefronts, saloons, jails, and livery stables that could be redressed to serve as virtually any town in the American West.
During the 1962-1963 season, the Laramie crew and the crew of The Virginian were filming simultaneously on the same streets. James Drury, the star of The Virginian, recalled seeing the Laramie company working nearby on a regular basis.
This proximity produced lasting personal friendships among the casts, most notably between Robert Fuller and Doug McClure.
The construction of these backlot streets involved specific engineering details worth knowing. The “bricks” on many of the two-story buildings were actually made of rubber, a standard safety feature for Western productions where actors were regularly slammed into walls during fight sequences.
Some doorways were built slightly smaller than standard size, a deliberate choice by production designers to make the lead actors appear larger and more heroic by contrast as they moved through the frame.
The streets themselves were built over modern paved roads to accommodate Universal’s studio tram tours and the heavy movement of production equipment. Before each day’s filming, crews would spread a layer of dirt over the pavement to maintain the illusion of an unpaved frontier road.
When filming wrapped for the day, the dirt was removed so tram tours could resume without kicking up dust over the tourists.
Three California Locations Created the Illusion of Wyoming
The wide-open spaces that gave Laramie its sense of frontier scale were filmed at three primary locations in Southern California, each providing a different visual texture.
Iverson Movie Ranch in Chatsworth, located in the Santa Susana Mountains, was the most important outdoor location for the series.
Its distinctive sandstone rock formations, known informally as the Garden of the Gods, provided the dramatic backdrop for ambushes, stagecoach chases, and riding sequences throughout the run. The rugged, rocky terrain read convincingly as the mountain passes of the Laramie Range on camera.
Vasquez Rocks in Agua Dulce, with its extreme upward-sloping rock strata, was a favorite of cinematographer Ray Rennahan and became so central to the show’s visual identity that the formations appeared in the opening titles of the second season. If you watch the credits of Laramie, you’re watching John Smith and Robert Fuller ride past Vasquez Rocks, which is located about 40 miles north of Los Angeles.
Bronson Canyon in Griffith Park, only minutes from Hollywood, provided a more enclosed environment for cave and mine sequences and narrow mountain trail scenes. Its proximity to the studio made it logistically indispensable despite being a less convincing stand-in for Wyoming terrain.
Cinematographers used specific techniques to hide the Mediterranean flora of California and make the landscape read as Wyoming. Low-angle shots framed actors against the sky, cropping out the eucalyptus trees and power lines that would destroy the period illusion.
In the color seasons, telephoto lenses compressed the distance between actors and background mountains, making the Southern California hills appear more like the imposing peaks of the Rockies.
The Color Transition Made Laramie Part of Television History
In the fall of 1961, Laramie became one of the first television Westerns to transition from black and white to color, and it did so as a deliberate corporate strategy. NBC was owned by RCA, the primary manufacturer of color television sets. To sell more hardware, the network needed high-quality color programming, and Laramie was selected as a flagship vehicle for this push.
The visual success of the transition is attributed to cinematographer Ray Rennahan, a two-time Oscar winner and veteran of the original Technicolor three-strip process in Hollywood feature films.
Color film of the early 1960s required enormous amounts of light, typically 400 to 600 foot-candles versus the 100 to 200 needed for black and white. Rennahan understood how to prevent the color episodes from looking flat or over-lit, and his work on the series was frequently cited as among the best color cinematography on television at the time.
On January 2, 1962, NBC introduced a new version of its “Living Color” peacock logo before the broadcast of Laramie. The logo, designed to pop on the new color television sets with vibrant reds, blues, and oranges, became so associated with that broadcast that fans and television historians dubbed it “the Laramie Peacock.” It remained in use until 1975.
The Cast Finally Visited the Real Laramie in 2019
During the show’s entire four-year production run from 1959 to 1963, no member of the cast or crew ever filmed in the actual city of Laramie, Wyoming.
The town embraced the show as a point of civic pride regardless, and cast members John Smith and Robert Fuller were made honorary citizens of Wyoming, though their filming schedules prevented visits during the production years.
The relationship finally became physical in July 2019, when the city invited surviving cast members to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the show’s premiere.
Local historian Mike Gray organized a three-day celebration during Laramie Jubilee Days that brought Robert Fuller, Robert Crawford Jr., and Dennis Holmes to Wyoming for the first time in connection with the show.
The cast participated in a Q&A panel, autograph sessions, and a “Dinner at Sherman Ranch” themed gala. For Fuller, who had made a separate guest visit to the city in 2017, the 2019 event was a genuine encounter with the West he had represented on screen for four years without ever seeing in person.
More than 5,000 fans belong to the Robert Fuller Fandom, and many traveled specifically to attend the reunion.
What Happened to the Sets After the Show Ended
The physical legacy of Laramie is a story of gradual demolition. After the show’s cancellation in 1963, the Sherman Ranch set remained on the Universal backlot for several years, occasionally appearing as a generic location in other Revue productions.
As the Western genre faded from network television in the 1970s, the space became more valuable for other uses. The Shiloh Ranch set from The Virginian was demolished in the mid-70s and the Sherman Ranch is believed to have met a similar fate around the same time.
The “Laramie Street” section of the backlot persisted longer but has been systematically dismantled over recent decades. The Denver Street area, a staple of Laramie town scenes, was removed to accommodate theme park expansions.
The famous 6 Points, Texas barn that appeared in countless Westerns across multiple decades was demolished in the early 2020s to make way for the Super Nintendo World attraction.
Today, Universal’s studio tram tours pass over the same ground where the Sherman Ranch once stood. The vista is now dominated by soundstages and theme park infrastructure. A handful of rubber bricks from the original Western street reportedly survive in the few remaining storefronts, but they are increasingly rare.
For fans, the physical connection to the show has shifted from the studio lot to the surviving outdoor locations. Vasquez Rocks and the former Iverson Movie Ranch, now partially developed as a residential area, still draw visitors who want to stand where Robert Fuller and John Smith filmed their riding sequences six decades ago.
And there is always the real Laramie, Wyoming, which has embraced its connection to a show that never actually filmed there as its own piece of Western heritage.
The 2019 anniversary visit demonstrated that the relationship between a television fiction and the real place it borrowed its name from can become genuine over time, even if it took sixty years and a road trip from California to make it happen.
For the full story of the Laramie cast and what happened to each of them after the show ended, the cast hub covers everyone in detail.
And if you want to know more about why Laramie was cancelled after four strong seasons, that story is covered here.
