The Real Town From Clint Eastwood’s ‘Unforgiven’ Is for Sale for $19.2 Million
Clint Eastwood’s 1992 film Unforgiven won an Oscar for best picture and is considered by many critics as one of the best Westerns ever made. Now, you have the chance to own the Canadian estate where much of the move was filmed, provided you have a spare $19 million.
Clint Eastwood’s ‘Unforgiven’ was filmed on a 480-acre Canadian ranch
In Unforgiven, Clint Eastwood plays a retired gunslinger who reluctantly returns to his previous work as a bounty hunter. His latest job takes him to Big Whiskey, Wyoming, which is ruled over by a ruthless sheriff (played by Gene Hackman).
The real Big Whiskey is located on a 480-acre ranch about an hour outside of Calgary, Alberta. The town has been fully preserved and consists of a sheriff’s office (complete with two jail cells), a saloon and a gambling hall, a blacksmith shop, a livery and stables, a bank, and a carpentry shop. A church and mercantile have also been added to the set. And unlike many other movie sets, the buildings in Big Whiskey are fully functional and habitable.
The price of owning this unique piece of movie history? A cool $19.2 million, according to TopTenRealEstateDeals.com. But the property – known as The Ranch at Fisher Creek – is much more than just a film set.
The ranch also includes a spacious lodge and indoor equestrian arena
In addition to a recreated old West town, the ranch – located in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains not far from Banff National Park – has some other pretty spectacular features. It includes a large main lodge with five bedrooms, 11 bathrooms, and seven fireplaces. Six guest cabins (divided into 17 suites) connect to the lodge via elevated walkways.
Equestrian facilities include a five-stall stable, indoor equestrian arena, riding hall, and veterinarian office. The property also features an 11-acre lake with a waterfall and private boathouse as well as a helipad.
Chris Burns and Greg Carros of Engel & Völkers have the listing.
The Clint Eastwood movie helped revive Alberta’s film industry
For Clint Eastwood, Unforgiven was both a critical and commercial success. The revisionist Western also helped boost Alberta’s struggling film industry. In the 1970s, movies such as Little Big Man and Days of Heaven were filmed in the province. But by the early 1990s, the area was no longer attracting many major Hollywood productions, according to a 2022 report in the Calgary Herald. Unforgiven changed all that.
“It gave us instant credibility,” said Dean Goodine, who was the movie’s assistant prop master on the movie and also wrote a memoir about his career in the film industry, They Don’t Pay Me To Say No: My Life in Film and Television Props. “Alberta at the time was going through a cycle. One year it would do a movie, the following year it would all be TV. What happened was, after Unforgiven, suddenly Legends of the Fall was scouting Alberta and ended up shooting in Alberta. Then you had Lonesome Dove: the Series. It was a residual effect … For a while there, we were really riding the Unforgiven wave.”
Since then, Alberta has provided the backdrop for a number of notable films, many of them Westerns. Other movies filmed there include Brokeback Mountain, The Revenant, and The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford. TV shows such as Fargo, Heartland, and Wynonna Earp have also been filmed in the province, according to Travel Alberta.
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