By Courtney Potter
Presented by Visit California
Walt Disney may have spent his early years in the Midwest—born in Chicago, Illinois; raised in Marceline, Missouri; first job as in animation in Kansas City—but no other state in the Union is probably more synonymous with the iconic creator of Mickey Mouse than California… it’s where he and his older brother Roy started The Walt Disney Studios and created Disneyland Park…
It’s no wonder, then, that Walt’s chosen home state has shown up in so much of his work. And let’s not forget the historic locations Walt himself was known to frequent around Southern California, in both Los Angeles and Palm Springs.
What better way to explore some of “Walt and California” than to create a (virtual) D23 Fan Road Trip through some of the quintessential California locations Walt either visited himself, or highlighted in various creative projects, during his lifetime.
So grab your favorite road trip snack, hop in, and buckle up… let’s go for a statewide spin—presented in (generally) regional order from south to north—with Walt!
Southern California: Los Feliz
Walt famously first arrived in California in 1923—the year we’re named after!—to meet up with his brother Roy and begin what was to become The Walt Disney Company. Initially, Walt worked from his uncle Robert’s garage on Kingswell Avenue; soon, the brothers established their business in the rear of a small real estate office blocks away, at 4651 Kingswell Ave., where they produced the very first Alice Comedy s. While that office has changed as new businesses have taken residence, the small strip on the corner of Kingswell Avenue and Vermont Avenue was officially designated the Disney Bros. Cartoon Studio Square in 2024. It’s a must-see for any Disney fan’s visit to Los Angeles! Many decades later, Los Feliz (and other iconic nearby neighborhoods) would help shape the 2012 reimagining of Buena Vista Street at Disney California Adventure Park—with, among other landmarks, its Carthay Circle Restaurant and Lounge, inspired by the former Carthay Circle Theatre in Los Angeles where Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs premiered in 1937.
Southern California: Griffith Park
When Walt and his wife, Lillian, purchased five acres in the Holmby Hills neighborhood to build a new home, Disney studio architect John V. Cowles Jr. also designed a barn for the property—shaped, in fact, after one that appeared in Walt’s 1949 film So Dear to My Heart (spoiler alert: stay tuned later in this list!). Walt used the barn as storage for his model trains and as a workshop, and it’s even considered a “birthplace of Imagineering”… so when the house was set for demolition decades later, Walt’s daughter Diane Disney Miller worked with The Carolwood Society—a nonprofit dedicated to sustaining Walt’s railroad legacy—to move and preserve the barn. It opened to the public in 1999, inviting guests to see it up close on the third Sunday of every month at Griffith Park’s Los Angeles Live Steamers Museum (of which Walt was a founding member). Griffith Park itself should sound familiar—as it’s also the location of a notable Merry-Go-Round that, legend holds, helped inspire Walt to create a certain theme park.
Southern California: Anaheim
As Walt was searching for a location for Disneyland, he hired the Stanford Research Institute to do the survey for him—and their preferred location, after many different options, turned out to be Anaheim. Negotiations for the purchase of a parcel of land, where Harbor Boulevard intersects the Santa Ana Freeway (Interstate 5), began… and ultimately, it was there that Disneyland was built—as seen in Leslie Iwerks’ recent documentary Disneyland Handcrafted—in 1955. Disneyland’s success acted as a catalyst for the incredible growth of Anaheim that’s occurred over these ensuing years. (Later this summer, D23 returns to Anaheim for D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event, with a whole week of fun events happening throughout the city—including D23 Night at Angel Stadium, D23 Night at the Anaheim Packing District, and Capturing Life, Creating Character: The Art of Live-Action Reference, a world premiere exhibition curated by the Walt Disney Archives at the Muzeo Museum and Cultural Center.)
Southern California: Palm Springs
In 1946, Walt agreed to buy a lot at Palm Springs’ Smoke Tree Ranch; the deed was signed in 1949 and an architect was hired by April 1950. But in order to help fund Disneyland, he eventually sold the home he’d built there. Once the park proved successful, he moved into his second home on the ranch in 1957. Smoke Tree Ranch was considered Walt’s getaway—and he made frequent trips to the property for the rest of his life. While there, he and his family liked to horseback-ride, and Walt himself became an avid lawn bowler… even sponsoring tournaments and having trophies made for the winners! Nowadays, that Disney legacy in Palm Springs is felt through Cotino, A Storyliving by Disney community in nearby Rancho Mirage—offering residents the same sense of wonder and tranquility that made the area a beloved retreat for Walt and his family.
Southern California: San Diego County
The only film on which Walt received an on-screen story credit—as “Retlaw Yensid”—is the 1966 live-action film Lt. Robin Crusoe, U.S.N., starring future Disney Legend Dick Van Dyke. Blending Navy comedy with island adventure, it follows as pilot Van Dyke’s routine flight takes an unexpected turn and he’s forced to eject over the Pacific Ocean… leaving him stranded on a remote tropical island with only an emergency raft and his wits to survive! In July 1965, Walt and members of the production crew traveled to San Diego to board the 80,000-ton U.S. Navy supercarrier USS Kitty Hawk—and would spend five days on the vessel filming portions of the film. A year later, in one of the most unique Disney film premieres ever staged, the carrier returned from active wartime service in the Pacific and moored at Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego Bay for the premiere of Lt. Robin Crusoe, U.S.N.
While you may not be able to visit the USS Kitty Hawk in San Diego in 2026 (it was decommissioned in ’09), you can spend some time relaxing at legendary retreats like Hotel del Coronado; discovering culture downtown and in Balboa Park; strolling through shops in La Jolla; or enjoying a round of golf at Torrey Pines.
Southern California: Inland Empire
In Walt Disney’s Big Red (1962), based on a novel by Jim Kjelgaard, a 10-year-old boy named Rene (Gilles Payant) believes an Irish Setter dog can be handled and trained with love rather than strict discipline—a notion that creates conflict with Mr. Haggin (Walter Pidgeon), the owner of the kennel where he works. Besides interiors shot at The Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, sequences were filmed on location in La Malbaie, Canada—as well as at Big Bear Lake, located in the alpine region of California’s Inland Empire, where hiking fans can adventure up the beautiful 2.7-mile Castle Rock trek, starting just east of Big Bear Dam.
For more “Inlands” fun and adventure, don’t miss out on visiting shimmering Lake Arrowhead too—and make sure to take a drive down the famous Route 66 in San Bernardino County. Wine lovers can enjoy Temecula County, where you can also enjoy a scenic hot-air balloon ride.
Central Coast: Carmel-by-the-Sea
The Parent Trap (1961), a classic from Walt’s time that starred future Disney Legend Hayley Mills, was partially filmed at the prominent Fish family’s 5,200-acre Palo Corona Ranch near Carmel-by-the-Sea. (Even before teenage twins Sharon and Susan set historic foot on the site, it made history when aviator Charles Lindbergh and his wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, stayed at the ranch as guests while on an extended 1930 honeymoon!) Cities on the Central Coast like Carmel-by-the-Sea and nearby Monterey—where other scenes for the 1961 film were shot, at the legendary Pebble Beach golf course—are known for their intimate, coastal charm… offering white-sand beaches; stunning scenery; and one-of-a-kind experiences, including lots of family fun (such as the Monterey Bay Aquarium).
Carmel-by-the-sea is not considered “the Bay Area”. The Bay Area is not considered part of the Central Coast of California. Are we able to revise wording?
Central Valley
Disney’s heartwarming 1949 film So Dear to My Heart follows young Jeremiah Kincaid (Bobby Driscoll) as he spends his childhood days living on his grandmother’s farm. He eventually adopts a baby black lamb, names him Danny (named after the famous racehorse Dan Patch), and begins to train him to become a champion. Driscoll received a special outstanding juvenile Academy Award® for his work on that film (as well as on RKO’s The Window), and the film itself was also nominated for Best Song. Portions of So Dear to My Heart were filmed in San Joaquin Valley, in the Central Valley area of California—an incredibly robust agricultural region known for farm-to-table local flavors and an underrated wine region.
Northern California: Sonoma County
On the hunt for an ideal location to portray Aunt Polly’s house in Disney’s 1960 film Pollyanna (also starring Mills), filmmakers wound up in Santa Rosa, in on the outskirts of Sonoma ValleyCounty. Occupying a full block in the center of the town and surrounded by lawns and gardens, the structure had been built in 1877 as a replica of an old house in Natchez, Mississippi. The surrounding environs no doubt added to the opulent look… Sonoma, Napa, Mendocino, and Lake counties make up California’s “Wine Country” region; in Sonoma alone, there are more than 350 wineries! And there are several “Disney Family Wineries” located across this region—including MacMurray Estate Vineyards (established by late Disney Legend Fred MacMurray) in Healdsburg, and Silverado Vineyards (established by the late Diane Disney Miller, Walt’s daughter, and her late husband and former Disney CEO Ron Miller) in Napa.
Northern California: San Francisco and Beyond
While this film wasn’t released until a few years after Walt’s passing, it’s synonymous with an era of quintessential Disney projects on which his proverbial fingerprints were seen throughout. In 1969’s The Love Bug, a down-and-out racetrack driver named Jim Douglas (Disney Legend Dean Jones) acquires a little Volkswagen but doesn’t realize that the “bug” is, well, almost human. On-location filming for The Love Bug was done in and around San Francisco—the “city by the bay” that’s the 17th most populous in the entire United States. From incredible food and amazing museums to stunning locales like the Palace of Fine Arts, it’s a must-see stop on every California visitor’s road trip itinerary. And not too far north from San Francisco, no trip to California is complete without a visit to see the redwoods in all their majesty—perhaps at Humboldt Redwoods State Park!
More Northern California
Walt was known for his love of skiing—and in the late 1930s, Walt met Austrian skiing champion Hannes Schroll, who was then director of the Yosemite Ski School. Walt later became a stockholder and enthusiastic supporter of Schroll’s Sugar Bowl Ski Resort near Lake Tahoe—and in Walt’s honor, he rechristened its 7,950-ft. Hemlock Peak as Mount Disney. Fun fact: Sugar Bowl Lodge is the setting for the 1941 animated Goofy “How-to” short The Art of Skiing, in which Schroll—also a yodeler—originated the iconic “Goofy holler”! (You can hear him yodeling too.) The Sierra Nevadas are rich in storytelling and outdoor fun, with historic family-friendly towns like Tahoe City, Truckee, and Bishop beckoning for a visit.
Other locations in the northern half of the state to explore include Yosemite, where you can learn all about California’s Gold Rush—a time in the state’s history that’s depicted in the 1967 Disney film The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin, released just a few months after Walt’s passing. Make it a full-circle kind of trip and add a stop in Sacramento, where you can visit the California State Railroad Museum (which Walt, a railroad fan, would have loved). If you really love the mountains, be sure to also take in the incredible sights of Mt. Shasta.