(GPS: N34° 14.545 W116° 58.655)
Nightmare #3 (concluded)
Nightmare #3 (concluded)
The video:
The Big Bear Werewolf (Youtube Version)
The Big Bear Werewolf (Vimeo Version)
Here is the main reason I came to Big Bear. The original Big Bear Dam was built in 1884. This is what created the lake which received its water from the snow melt. Eventually, a new dam was created in 1912. In 1924, State Route 18 was built as a bridge over the new dam. Both the dams and the bridge are in the movie. This ends up being where the end of the movie takes place with the townspeople in pursuit of the werewolf.
Here is the bridge as it looked when I was there.
A closeup of our werewolf running toward the camera.
Something like this. I think I would have had to move forward a little more, but it gets the job done.
In the video, I show the area the tractor blocks off the werewolf from crossing the bridge. He is forced to go over the side of the bridge.
He dropped into that.
He would have a hard time dropping into it these days with all of that in there.
You will notice there is a lot of water at the dam above. In the movie, he is able to jump down on dry land and move out to the old dam.
It is at this point he is in the line of sight for all the townspeople to shoot at him and he is killed.
You are supposed to be able to see the foundations of the old dam when the water is lower. From what I can tell from some of old pictures I have seen the old dam would not have been too far out in front of this picture. Maybe a little less than the middle of the picture.BTW, the conditions at the bridge were not great the day I went. There were a lot of things going on near the bridge. One issue was the wind was really bad. Another was there was constant traffic coming over the bridge. It is one of the major points of entering and exiting Big Bear. Another problem was the icy snow on some of the parts I was walking on around the bridge. So, I really had to be careful walking around there, and I did not want to expose my equipment out there too much because of these conditions. I took a few takes on the video and decided it was enough. This is part of the reason I had to use a little video trick editing at the end and added some audio from another take. It was difficult getting the pictures and video, but I did okay I think.
The reason I wanted to do this one now and not wait any longer to visit Big Bear is that it looks like the public will no longer be able to go over the old bridge over the dam the movie ended on. I am not going to post the pictures, but if you watched the video you will see where I showed some of the construction work being done on the new bridge. From what I can tell the dam will be the same, but the road will continue on to the new bridge.
