Movie town vanishes with Lone Ranger

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - A 90-second trailer that aired during the Super Bowl on Sunday gave more than 100 million people a look at Tonto, the Lone Ranger and New Mexico.

Much of Disney’s "The Lone Ranger" was shot last year in the Land of Enchantment in the Rio Puerco Valley west of Albuquerque.

Movie crews built an old-time western town complete with a saloon, hardware store and train tracks. Those train tracks get demolished if trailers for The Lone Ranger are any indication.

But it’s not just the train tracks that were destroyed. Now everything is gone.

The New Mexico Film Office asked Disney to leave the set behind.

“You want to do what you can to keep them," said Nick Maniatis, director of the New Mexico Film Office.  "Sometimes it works out that you can, and sometimes it’s really just the economy and the legality of doing it, and just the technical issues of doing it just are outweighed by being able to keep it."

Maniatis said there were too many legal issues and that Disney just didn’t have a place to store the set. The town was dismantled when filming wrapped leaving proof only on the big screen that the Lone Ranger ever set foot in the Rio Puerco Valley.

But seeing iconic shots of New Mexico during the Super Bowl was big for the film industry and Maniatis.

“It’s great to see it and to especially see iconic shots where you got to see Shiprock,” Maniatis said. “That’s very big for us, big for tourism, and it’s just great for the whole state.”