What state was Gunsmoke filmed in? Dodge City stood on a studio backlot — the open-range scenes were shot in other states

For 20 years and 635 episodes, CBS sold America a Kansas cattle town that no camera crew ever visited. The real Dodge City was scattered across three states — and one abandoned version of it is still slowly collapsing in the desert.

The short version of a long production history: Gunsmoke was a California show. Marshal Matt Dillon's Front Street, the Long Branch Saloon, and Doc's office lived on Hollywood soundstages and backlots, while the trail rides and open country came mostly from Utah and Arizona. Kansas itself contributed exactly nothing except the name.

The California years

When the series launched in 1955, most of the outdoor work happened at Melody Ranch, a 22-acre Western movie lot in the Santa Clarita Valley that had already hosted The Lone Ranger. James Arness, who played Dillon for the entire run, recalled the place fondly in a 2006 SCVTV interview:

"It certainly was the ideal place to do these shows," Arness said, noting the lot even had its own train.

After the early seasons, the production's home base became the Dodge City street set built at CBS Studio Center in Studio City, with interiors like the Long Branch shot on Stage 3. Some storefronts were built specifically for Gunsmoke; others were recycled from other CBS Westerns. When scripts called for terrain the backlot couldn't fake, crews used Paramount Ranch in Agoura Hills, Iverson Ranch in Chatsworth, the Kern River Valley, Bronson Canyon, and the Janss Conejo Ranch in Thousand Oaks.

Utah: the other Dodge City

As the show grew, so did its appetite for real frontier scenery, and that meant Johnson Canyon near Kanab, Utah — a town so busy with Westerns it earned the nickname "Little Hollywood." The production built a full replica of the Dodge City set about three miles outside Kanab, among red-rock cliffs and sagebrush hills, and it became one of the largest sets ever constructed in the area.

That replica still exists, sort of. The buildings sit on private property in a state of disrepair, fenced off and visible only from the road — a genuine ghost town that was never a real town in the first place.

Read more: Where was Ransom Canyon filmed? The Texas ranch country was recreated in Minka Kelly's own hometown

Arizona and the rest of the map

Rounding out the geography:

• Old Tucson Studios, Arizona — the desert stand-in for episodes that needed harsher, drier country than California could offer.
• Various California outposts — Randsburg, Pioneertown, and Joshua Tree all reportedly turn up across the 20 seasons.
• Alberta, Canada — not the series, but the 1987 reunion movie Gunsmoke: Return to Dodge was shot around Calgary and Canmore, the one time Dodge City left the country entirely.

So the honest answer to "what state" is: California first, Utah and Arizona for the open range, Kansas never.

Did the cast ever see the real Dodge City?

Once. Around the show's second year, Arness and a group of fellow TV cowboys traveled to the actual Dodge City, Kansas for a celebration — a publicity visit, not a shoot. The town has long since leaned into the association anyway: there's a Boot Hill Museum, a recreated Front Street, and tributes to Arness and the cast.

Total number of Gunsmoke episodes filmed in Kansas across two decades: zero.

Dodge City became the most famous town in TV Western history without a single frame shot inside state lines. The tourism board seems to have forgiven everyone involved.

Earlier we wrote: Why did Gunsmoke end abruptly? The cast read about it in the papers — the reasons behind CBS's call