Mary Pickford in Boulder Creek: A Romance of the Redwoods

In 1917, the most famous woman in the world came to Boulder Creek to make a movie. Mary Pickford was earning $10,000 a week plus half the profits, enough that her distributor built a whole new company around her releases. Cecil B. DeMille directed.

The film was A Romance of the Redwoods, and its exteriors were shot near Boulder Creek on the Poverty Flat set, a fake gold-rush town a film company had built here two years earlier. Unlike most silent films made in these mountains, this one survives.

What was filmed here

UCSC's Santa Cruz Silent Cinema project states it directly: "The exteriors were shot in northern California near Boulder Creek, in Santa Cruz County, on sets built by the California Motion Picture Corporation."

Those sets were Poverty Flat, the roughly 25-building mining town that George Middleton and Beatriz Michelena put up on family land outside Boulder Creek in early 1915. In A Romance of the Redwoods it plays a fictional camp called Strawberry Flats. When you see the town in this film, you're looking at a structure that stood in Boulder Creek.

What was not filmed here

This part matters, and most write-ups get it wrong.

The stagecoach holdup sequence, one of the film's set pieces, was shot in Ben Lomond, at a spot UCSC's researchers haven't been able to identify. That's a different town, seven miles down Highway 9, and we don't relabel Ben Lomond history as Boulder Creek history.

Beyond that, we can't currently give you a scene-by-scene breakdown. What we can say is this: the town exteriors are Poverty Flat near Boulder Creek, at least one major sequence is Ben Lomond, and interiors were studio work. Anyone claiming a precise shot list for a 1917 production should be asked what document they're reading.

Why DeMille came to the redwoods

The commercial logic was Pickford. In 1916 she'd negotiated a deal that made her the highest-paid performer in the industry: roughly $10,000 per week against 50 percent of the profits, with Artcraft Pictures Corporation formed specifically to release her films. At that price, the production needed to look like something.

The story is a Gold Rush romance: Pickford as a young woman who travels west to join an uncle and finds a road agent living under his name instead. It needed a mining camp and mountain forest. Southern California was already the industry's center by 1917, but a standing, purpose-built gold-rush town in genuine old-forest country was a real asset, and the California Motion Picture Corporation had one sitting in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

It was also early DeMille. The Biblical spectacles that define his reputation were years away. In 1917 he was a working director building a résumé, and this was one of many films made in Santa Cruz County during that period.

What Boulder Creek looked like to a film crew in 1917

The town they came to was a lumber town in decline and a resort town on the rise. The railroad still ran to Boulder Creek. Big Basin had been California's first state park for fifteen years. The big mills were running out of accessible old growth, and the valley was learning to sell scenery instead of board feet.

For a production, that combination was ideal: rail access for people and equipment, hotels and boarding houses that could absorb a crew, local labor experienced with timber and teams, and forest that photographed as wilderness within a short haul of a working town.

We haven't yet found local newspaper coverage of the 1917 shoot. Mountain Echo issues from that year are a live research target, and a crew of that profile arriving in a town this size would almost certainly have been reported.

Where to see it

A Romance of the Redwoods is one of the rare survivors. silentera.com records a 35mm positive at the George Eastman Museum and a 16mm reduction positive at the Mary Pickford Institute for Film Education. Lower-quality copies circulate online.

Two notes on that. First, quality matters a lot for location identification: a soft, cropped transfer isn't much use for matching a ridgeline. Second, Boulder Creek Local doesn't link to uploads whose rights status we can't verify. If you want to see it properly, watch for archival screenings and silent film festival programming, which is where preserved prints of this era actually surface.

Compare that to the rest of the Poverty Flat filmography: a 1931 nitrate fire in the California Motion Picture Corporation's San Rafael vault destroyed nearly everything else shot at that set. A Romance of the Redwoods survives largely because it was a Pickford picture on a major distributor's release schedule, and Pickford's films got looked after.

What we're still looking for

This is where the story is still open, and where a local reader might have what an archive doesn't:

• Newspaper items: Mountain Echo pieces from 1917 reporting the production's arrival, lodging or hiring.
• Photographs: anything taken during the shoot, especially images showing Poverty Flat buildings.
• Family memories: relatives who worked as extras, teamsters or laborers on the production.
• The Ben Lomond location: the stagecoach holdup site, which remains unidentified.
• Production paperwork: any correspondence or call sheets held in DeMille or Artcraft collections.

If you have a photograph, a clipping, or a family story that touches any of this, send it through the contribution link below. Corrections and leads from residents are how these pages get more accurate over time.

Frequently Asked Questions

Did Mary Pickford film in Boulder Creek?

Yes. UCSC's silent cinema research states that the exteriors for A Romance of the Redwoods (1917) were shot near Boulder Creek on sets built by the California Motion Picture Corporation, the Poverty Flat set.

Which scenes were shot in Boulder Creek?

The town exteriors, standing in for the fictional Strawberry Flats. The stagecoach holdup sequence was filmed in Ben Lomond, and interiors were studio work. A complete scene-by-scene breakdown hasn't been established.

Can I watch A Romance of the Redwoods?

The film survives. A complete 35mm print is held by the George Eastman Museum, and the Mary Pickford Institute for Film Education holds a 16mm reduction print. It appears occasionally in archival and silent film festival programming. Copies of varying quality circulate online; we don't link to uploads whose rights we can't verify.

Can I visit the filming location?

No. The Poverty Flat set was dismantled, and the probable site is private residential property with no marker or public access. This site doesn't publish a location for it.

Did Mary Pickford live in Boulder Creek?

No. She came for a production. There's no evidence of any residence here, and we treat that claim as false unless documents establish otherwise.

What else was filmed at the Poverty Flat set?

At least eight productions between 1915 and the early 1920s, including The Lily of Poverty Flat (1915), The Half-Breed (1916), The Flame of Hellgate (1920) and Soul of the Beast (1923). Most of that footage was destroyed in a 1931 vault fire. For the full story of the town that hosted them, see our history of the Poverty Flat film set near Boulder Creek.