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Drew Geishecker
@drewg
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thread 1/17
To commemorate the retirement of Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones, here’s a final look back at the times he traveled the world without really having left home.

These are the places in Northern California where they filmed portions of his adventures in the first three movies.

A 🧵 1/
A collage with the Indiana Jones logo in upper left, a photo of a seaplane at a pier upper right, a college campus building with vintage car out front lower right and a 1930s rounded airport with signage saying “Berlin Flughafen”. Across the middle is a map of Greece superimposed over an island, with a red line indicating a route toward that island.
03:18 PM - Jul 10, 2023
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Drew Geishecker
@drewg
A
thread 2/17
First up, the Pan Am “China Clipper” flying boat service that Indy flew on his way to Nepal was this Short Solent III that today sits at the Oakland Aviation Museum and is open to the public.

They even have the LIFE Magazine, behind which Indy is spied on during the flight, on display.
A collage of the vintage seaplane at a pier with passengers boarding, followed by smaller photos of the plane flying superimposed against a map of the Pacific Ocean, Indiana Jones staring out the plane window and a current-day shot of the same plane at the Oakland Aviation Museum.
03:59 PM - Jul 10, 2023 (Edited)
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Drew Geishecker
@drewg
A
thread 3/17
As Raiders took place in 1936 and Pan Am only launched the service in late October that year, he would’ve been among the first to fly commercially across the Pacific.

It would’ve been 59 hours of flight time to Manila, over 5 days, made 4 overnight stops and cost $950 one-way ($21,000 today).
A shot from Raiders of the plane flying toward the Golden Gate Bridge superimposed on top of a route map showing the plane leaving from San Francisco flying southwest toward Hawaii, followed by two smaller photos of the plane today one head-on showing the propellers and wingspan and the other showing the stairs looking up at the plane's entry door.
04:00 PM - Jul 10, 2023
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Drew Geishecker
@drewg
A
thread 4/17
However, he wouldn’t have been on the type of plane shown.

The Short Solent wasn’t made until the late 1940s, while the real planes used for Pan Am’s first island-hopping flights across the Pacific were Martin M-130s (shown).

All three of those planes had crashed by 1945. Hence, the stand-in.
A vintage photo of the M-130 seaplane sitting in San Francisco Bay and two smaller photos, one of a map of the China Clipper service route across the Pacific Ocean, starting in San Francisco with stops in Honolulu, Midway, Wake Island, Guam and its final destination of Manila. The third photo is an aerial shot of Treasure Island with the Bay Bridge and the San Francisco skyline in the background.
04:01 PM - Jul 10, 2023
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Drew Geishecker
@drewg
A
thread 5/17
Indy’s flight is shown boarding in Alameda Harbor, across the Bay from San Francisco, where passenger service began, but was filmed at a pier on Treasure Island, between the two spans of the Bay Bridge. (Most of the shot is matte painting.)
04:01 PM - Jul 10, 2023
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Drew Geishecker
@drewg
A
thread 6/17
Oddly, had Indy’s journey begun less than two years later, the China Clipper was subsequently flown out of a newly built airport on Treasure Island. That airport only operated for three years, however, before it was repurposed for the Navy when the U.S. entered WWII.
An aerial view of the main airport terminal, forming a semi-circle, in a present-day photo of Treasure Island.
04:02 PM - Jul 10, 2023
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Drew Geishecker
@drewg
A
thread 7/17
Aviation advances occurred so rapidly during the war that the flying boats were made obsolete by newer planes that were much too large to operate out of Treasure Island.

So, Pan Am service moved to present-day SFO and the “old” airport was kept by the Navy as an administration building.
04:03 PM - Jul 10, 2023
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Drew Geishecker
@drewg
A
thread 8/17
Ironically, while the airport on Treasure Island missed appearing in Raiders, it would later pop up in the series, standing in for the Berlin Airport where Indy and his dad boarded the Zeppelin in Last Crusade.

The former airport hosts a small museum today with exhibits on the Pan Am Clipper.
A current-day close-up at ground level of the airport building on Treasure Island and a still of the building dressed up as the Berlin Airport, with vintage cars out front, from Last Crusade. Nazi symbols on the building from the film have been optically blurred out.
04:04 PM - Jul 10, 2023
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Drew Geishecker
@drewg
A
thread 9/17
Before boarding the flight, Indy was shown teaching at Marshall College. The exterior of the school shown in Raiders was the Faye Spanos Concert Hall at University of the Pacific in Stockton, 80 miles east of San Francisco.

The interiors were filmed at a girls’ boarding school outside of London.
A present-day shot of the Concert Hall at University of the Pacific with smaller pictures of the exterior shown in the film and the meeting Indy and Marcus have with government officials inquiring about the Ark within (which was shot in England).
04:09 PM - Jul 10, 2023
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Drew Geishecker
@drewg
A
thread 10/17
For the secret island base in the Mediterranean where Belloq opens the Ark, Spielberg took a model sub built for his earlier film, 1941, and shot it floating in front of the tiny uninhabited West Marin Island in San Francisco Bay near San Quentin.
A still from Raiders showing the secret island in profile with a sub in the foreground headed toward it, followed by a smaller area shot of West Marin Island with the Richmond Bridge shown in the background and another still from the film of Belloq and accomplices opening the Ark on the island.
04:14 PM - Jul 10, 2023
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Drew Geishecker
@drewg
A
thread 11/17
They then enhanced West Marin with a much more dramatic matte painting and filmed the on-island scenes at a submarine depot in La Rochelle, France, a Tunisian canyon also used in Star Wars, and an interior set in Elstree Studios, England.
04:15 PM - Jul 10, 2023
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Drew Geishecker
@drewg
A
thread 12/17
For Temple of Doom, although the entire picture was set abroad, the Shanghai airport at which Indy, Willie & Short Round board their doomed flight aboard Lao Che Air is the decommissioned Hamilton Air Force Base, just a few miles north of West Marin Island, also in the North Bay of San Francisco.
A still of the night scene arriving at the Shanghai Airport from Temple of Doom, with a prop plane in front and the hangar building in back. Two smaller photos are of Indy taunting Lao Che as he closes the door from inside the plane and a vintage photo of the same hangar building and control tower from the air base.
04:27 PM - Jul 10, 2023
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Drew Geishecker
@drewg
A
thread 13/17
While the airplane hangers still stand, they’ve been modernized and now operate as an office park.
An aerial shot of the converted hangar buildings as an office park surrounded by cars today.
04:29 PM - Jul 10, 2023
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Drew Geishecker
@drewg
A
thread 14/17
When their plane crashes in the Himalayas, they’re saved by jumping into an inflatable life raft thrown out of the plane, first landing on the slopes of Mammoth Mountain ski resort, south of Yosemite National Park.
The main photo is of a yellow inflatable life raft landing with Indy and companions in it onto a snow-covered slope with mountains in the background. Smaller secondary photos are of the raft rapidly sliding down the slope with an explosion in the background, the raft going over the steep cliff of a canyon and the raft navigating heavy river rapids.
04:35 PM - Jul 10, 2023
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Drew Geishecker
@drewg
A
thread 15/17
The raft goes over a cliff in Twin Falls, Idaho, courtesy of some nice matte work again, and lands back in the California, Tuolumne and American Rivers in/around Yosemite before coming ashore in Kandy, Sri Lanka.
04:35 PM - Jul 10, 2023
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Drew Geishecker
@drewg
A
thread 16/17
For Last Crusade, we’ve already covered the Berlin airport.

The only other scene shot in the Bay Area was the motorcycle sidecar chase after Indy & his dad escape Castle Brunwald on the Austro-German border.

It was Mt. Tamalpais State Park, aka Mt. Tam, in the North Bay, near George Lucas’s ILM.
A still from Last Crusade showing Indy driving a motorcycle with his father (Sean Connery) in the sidecar looking back while being chased, as well as a head-on shot of Indy using a flag pole he’s broken off as a javelin while riding toward an enemy. A third photo shows the wooden directions post at an intersection they stop at post-fight sequence, pointing in alternate directions toward Venedig and Berlin.
04:44 PM - Jul 10, 2023
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Drew Geishecker
@drewg
A
thread 17/17
Neither Crystal Skull nor Dial of Destiny was filmed at all within Northern California, with the latter shot entirely outside the U.S.

Hope you enjoyed this stroll down memory lane of film history.

And farewell, Indy.

/end
04:47 PM - Jul 10, 2023
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