Travel To Hollywood On Location

Thanks to digital effects, filmmakers today can create almost anything -- monsters, aliens, tornadoes, tsunamis -- on movie screens.

But when it comes to spectacular natural scenery, it's hard to replicate the pristine beauty and wonder of real-life wilderness.

Ask the makers of "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier": A computer-generated rock face can't measure up to the grandeur of Yosemite's El Capitan.

Or George Lucas, who used Death Valley National Park, along with Tunisia, as scenery for the desert planet Tatooine in the first "Star Wars."

Or the makers of the original "Planet of the Apes," who thought the red-rock landcape of Glen Canyon National Recreation Area would make a neat monkey planet.
10 historic national park lodges

So when Hollywood needs a gorgeous or otherworldly backdrop, it has long turned to federally protected wilderness.

Over the past 50 years America's natural wonders have filled in onscreen for the Old West, for wintry Siberia and even for planets in a certain galaxy far, far away.
Here's a look at some of their most notable movie cameos.

'Close Encounters of the Third Kind'
Devils Tower National Monument, Wyoming

Many Americans weren't aware of this strange geological feature until Spielberg spotlighted it in the climax of his 1977 movie about friendly aliens who decide to touch down on Earth -- in northwestern Wyoming.

Devils Tower, a dramatic butte that rises 1,267 feet above the surrounding hills, is popular with climbers and is a sacred site to some Native Americans.

'Dances with Wolves'
Badlands National Park, South Dakota 

Most of this Kevin Costner epic Western was shot on private ranchland in South Dakota, although the Badlands makes a brief early appearance on Lt. Dunbar's wagon train ride from Fort Hays to his lonely frontier outpost.

The park's trippy landscape also became an alien planet filled with giant warmongering insects in "Starship Troopers."

'Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade'
Arches National Park, Utah

One of the highlights of the third movie in the Indiana Jones series was the prologue sequence, which explained how young Indy (River Phoenix) got his fedora, his chin scar and his fear of snakes.

The scene opens in Arches National Park, where Indy encounters a band of grave robbers in a cave before a madcap chase on a circus train.

The unique red-rock formations of Arches, in southeastern Utah, also hosted the cop-in-the-trunk scene in "Thelma and Louise." 

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