Owen Richard,2, got caught up in the lasso being spun by trick roping cowboy Keith O-Hara. The Santa Clarita Cowboy Festival is happening at the Melody Ranch Motion Picture Studio in Santa Clarita, CA. (John McCoy / Staff Photographer)
SANTA CLARITA - The Wild West came to life for thousands Saturday as cowboys, horses and saloon girls swaggered and sashayed down the dusty streets of a Western-themed movie set rarely open to the public. | MORE PHOTOS

The 2012 Cowboy Festival in Santa Clarita invited Western enthusiasts into Melody Ranch Motion Picture Studio for cowboy poetry and music, trick roping, leather tooling, wool spinning and panning for gold.

Children even got to try their hand at lassoing a plastic steer while astride a fake horse as real stallions trotted past, guided by cowboys outfitted in Stetsons, spurs and other authentic period costume pieces.

"Everybody's wanted to be a cowboy or cowgirl," said Keith O'Hara, a trick roper who was spinning his lasso and stepping in and out of the loop on the main boulevard.

"You go to Japan, China, anywhere else, they want to be one," said O'Hara, 65, an Apple Valley resident who has a role as a mayor in Quentin Tarantino's upcoming Western "Django Unchained" that was shot at the ranch.

Richard Crowe, a Western movie enthusiast, agreed as he watched O'Hara spinning the rope around a 2-year-old boy.

"You can't but have a little bit of `I wish I were a cowboy,"' said Crowe, 66, who drove out from the San Bernardino Valley to attend. "There's sort of an Americana, a nostalgia, that's kind of compelling."

The festival, which kicked off Thursday with a hoedown and mechanical bull rides, country music and line-dancing in Old Town Newhall, continues today.

Performers include The Quebe Sisters Band, Adrian - aka the Buckaroogirl - and Band of the California Battalion, a re-creation of a Civil War Union brass band.

The festival was among the best in the country for Lisa Hampton, who was taking pictures of her son and niece trying to lasso the fake steer.

As the wife of western music singer R.W. Hampton, a performer at the festival, she had traveled to 27 festivals around the U.S. since February.

"This is one of our favorites," Hampton said. "It's a family event. It's really one of the few that is family-designed."

The event was also a chance for enthusiasts to get into character while being in an authentic Old West setting.

"We walked by three guys who were dressed like real cowboys, and they looked mean," said Blanca Salter of Stevenson Ranch, whose son got his name hammered into a horseshoe. "And I just thought, if I lived back in that time, I'd be scared. They'd just take their gun out and shoot you dead."

Attendees can also browse Western and Southern memorabilia at the Melody Ranch Motion Picture Museum, including photos of actors who have worked on films at the ranch, and one of the General Lee cars from "The Dukes of Hazzard."

The ranch has been the site of TV shows and movies such as "Gunsmoke," "Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman" and "Deadwood."

"You're just thinking how it really was in the 1800s," said Tom White, who oversees memorabilia and donations to the museum. "You just kind of put yourself back in that era, how it really was, that kind of life. It was really darn peaceful, other than the gunfights and the saloon stuff."

Admission is $20 for adults and $10 for kids ages 12 and under. For more information, call 661-250-3735 or visit www.cowboyfestival.org.

 

By C.J. Lin, Staff Writer

Posted:   04/21/2012 07:58:30 PM PDT

Updated:   04/22/2012 10:36:02 AM PDT