What Famous Movies Were Filmed in Prescott, Arizona?

The best-known movies filmed in Prescott are Junior Bonner (1972) with Steve McQueen and Billy Jack (1971). Long before either one, Prescott was a silent-film town where cowboy star Tom Mix made westerns in the 1910s.

I was born and raised in Prescott Valley and I make films for a living, so this is a piece of local history I love. Here’s what was shot here and where you can still see it.

Junior Bonner (1972)

This is the big one. Sam Peckinpah directed it, and Steve McQueen played a worn-down rodeo rider coming home to Prescott. The cast included Robert Preston, Ida Lupino, and Ben Johnson.

It was filmed in Prescott in the summer of 1971, and the town plays itself. According to the Sharlot Hall Museum:

• The famous bar brawl was filmed inside the Palace Saloon on Whiskey Row. Auditions for local extras were held there too.
• The Frontier Days rodeo and the parade are in the film.
• Locals were hired as extras for $15 a day and a free lunch.

You can still walk into the Palace today and stand where that scene was shot.

Billy Jack (1971)

Tom Laughlin’s counterculture hit started filming in Prescott in the fall of 1969, though the movie wasn’t finished and released until 1971. The Sharlot Hall Museum keeps photographs from the production in its archives.

Tom Mix and the silent westerns

Prescott’s film history goes back to the very start of the movies.

In July 1912, the Lubin Film Company arrived in Prescott with a crew of actors and cameramen, after the Chamber of Commerce wrote to invite them. The Selig company filmed here too, and Tom Mix, who became one of the biggest cowboy stars of the silent era, came back to Prescott in 1915 running his own Selig unit. He shot scenes in the Granite Dells.

According to the Sharlot Hall Museum’s Days Past history of local film, more movies were made in Prescott between 1911 and 1920 than anywhere else in Arizona.

The museum also holds a seventeen-minute silent film from 1929 called “Things You Ought to Know About Prescott,” which shows the Granite Dells and the Yavapai County Courthouse as they looked almost a century ago.

Other films on the list

The City of Prescott’s tourism office keeps a running list of films and series shot in the Prescott area, sorted by decade. It’s a long one, and it includes titles like Easy Rider, Midnight Run, Universal Soldier, and Creepshow 2. For many of those, only certain scenes were shot in the area, so check the list if you’re hunting for a specific location.

What about Only the Brave?

A lot of people assume Only the Brave (2017) was filmed here, because it tells the story of Prescott’s Granite Mountain Hotshots. The story is ours, but most of the movie was shot in New Mexico, where the production recreated Prescott.

Why filmmakers keep coming here

I get it, because I film here every week. Within a short drive you have the boulders and water of the Granite Dells and Watson Lake, the ponderosa pines, a real courthouse square, and Whiskey Row. The light at a mile high is clean, and the sky is big. A director in 1915 and a wedding filmmaker today are looking for the same things.

Where to see it yourself

• The Palace Saloon, Whiskey Row. The Junior Bonner bar.
• Courthouse Plaza. The center of town, right across from Whiskey Row.
• The Granite Dells and Watson Lake. Tom Mix country.
• Sharlot Hall Museum. The archives and exhibits on Prescott’s film history.

Filming in Prescott today

You don’t need a Hollywood budget to put this town on screen. I film weddings, businesses, and events across Prescott and Prescott Valley, and these same locations show up in my work all the time. If you have something worth filming here, tell me about it.

Videographer in Prescott or in Prescott Valley.

Header photo: Yavapai County Courthouse, Prescott, by Mike McBey, licensed CC BY 2.0. Resized.