CREDITS HIGH NOON , 1952 dir: Fred Zinnemann Gary Cooper Thomas Mitchell Grace Kelly Lloyd Bridges Otto Kruger Katy Jurado Harry Morgan Lee Van Cleef

ìI won't be here when it's over. You're asking me to wait an hour to find out if I'm going to be a wife or a widow. I say it's too long to wait. I won't do it.î

Sheriff Will Kane (Gary Cooper) stands alone against the baddies, but fortunately wife Amy (Grace Kelly) does not forsake him.

The opening scenes, under the credits, were shot at the Iverson Ranch near Chatsworth, north of LA, but the fictitious 'Hadleyville, New Mexico' was to have been played by the Main Street of Columbia State Park, a preserved goldrush town in northern California.

By the time the crew arrived, however, spring had arrived and the bleak, bare main street of Columbia had burst into green leafiness.

High Noon: too lush and green for filming: Columbia State Park

In the end, they used the Western Street at, by coincidence, Columbia Pictures in Burbank.

Some of the real mining town remains in the picture, though. You canít miss the white picket fence of Sam Fuller (Harry Morgan), the cowardly friend who sends his wife to claim heís not at home. This is the Wilson House on Main Street, a few doors away from Visitor Center, and the last privately-owned home in the town.

High Noon location: the home of cowardly Sam Fuller: Wilson House, Main Street, Columbia State Park

Columbia State Historic Park is just east of the town of Columbia, 45 miles northeast of Modesto in Tuolumne County.

A few miles southeast of Columbia youíll find the church where Kane pleads for special deputies to face Frank Miller. Itís St Josephís Catholic Church, Gardner Avenue at Tuolumne Road in Tuolumne City, not a city at all but a tiny town just off Route 108.

High Noon location: the Sierra Railroad, Oakdale

The railroad station was built alongside a watertower at Warnerville, a little to the southwest, about 14 miles east of Oakdale on the narrow gauge Sierra Railroad. The famous railroad, seen in many films over the years, is still running. You can ride the vintage train at Oakdale, central California.