Vanishing Point: Argo's Car Delivery Service, Denver

[831 HQT]

Vanishing Point Filming Locations: Argo’s Car Delivery Service, Denver

Did you ever wonder - as I - where exactly in Denver Kowalski delivered this big ‘70 Chrysler Imperial limousine and picked up the pristine white Dodge Challenger? And how this place would look like today, some 46 years later?
Well, not much specific information about this is online; so after some digging here is what I found out:

Argo's Car Delivery Service | 2900 Inca Street, Denver
(Some sources say Argo’s Agency was located at the old Denargo Markets – which is not correct. Although in the same area, the Denargo Markets were quite a few blocks away.)


Then...

and now...

2900 Inca Street, Denver (Google Streetview)

2900 Inca Street, Denver (Google Streetview)

As you can see, this area (once called ‘The Bottoms’) has changed a lot from a somehow rundown warehouse district in the 1970’s into a trendy upscale neighborhood today. Seems the only remaining witnesses of the heydays of 1970 are the fireplug and – beautifully - the tree!

Some facts:
The street name ‘Inca’ is clearly visible in the film: written in white paint on the warehouse.
The Gardner Tool Corporation – seen in the background when K pulls in and out of the warehouse –was located at 2901 Inca, which is right across the street.
The railroad track is long gone, along with the old 20th Street viaduct.
The basic street pattern is still the same: Inca Street, Huron Street, W 29th Ave and
Chestnut Place (with the elevated 20th Street in the background).

Both scenes, the one on that rainy Friday night when K arrives at the agency and picks up the Challenger, and the one on sunny Saturday afternoon when (real) local anchor Bob Palmer interviews Sandy McKees, are completely shot here.
It’s amazing, everything you see in the film is real: The place, the warehouse (yes, even the inside!), the reporter, the biker gang. Now is this fiction or fact or what; is Vanishing Point merely a movie but possibly a real life report?

 

[DetMatt1]

That's some mighty fine sloothing!

 

[831 HQT]

Here the aforementioned Gardner Tool Corporation can be seen in the background.

 

[70cuda4406]

Vanishing Point Filming Locations: Argo’s Car Delivery Service, Denver

Did you ever wonder - as I - where exactly in Denver Kowalski delivered this big ‘70 Chrysler Imperial limousine and picked up the pristine white Dodge Challenger? And how this place would look like today, some 46 years later?
Well, not much specific information about this is online; so after some digging here is what I found out:

View attachment 27115

Argo's Car Delivery Service | 2900 Inca Street, Denver
(Some sources say Argo’s Agency was located at the old Denargo Markets – which is not correct. Although in the same area, the Denargo Markets were quite a few blocks away.)


Then...

View attachment 27116


and now...

View attachment 27118

2900 Inca Street, Denver (Google Streetview)



View attachment 27119

2900 Inca Street, Denver (Google Streetview)

As you can see, this area (once called ‘The Bottoms’) has changed a lot from a somehow rundown warehouse district in the 1970’s into a trendy upscale neighborhood today. Seems the only remaining witnesses of the heydays of 1970 are the fireplug and – beautifully - the tree!

Some facts:
The street name ‘Inca’ is clearly visible in the film: written in white paint on the warehouse.
The Gardner Tool Corporation – seen in the background when K pulls in and out of the warehouse –was located at 2901 Inca, which is right across the street.
The railroad track is long gone, along with the old 20th Street viaduct.
The basic street pattern is still the same: Inca Street, Huron Street, W 29th Ave and
Chestnut Place (with the elevated 20th Street in the background).

Both scenes, the one on that rainy Friday night when K arrives at the agency and picks up the Challenger, and the one on sunny Saturday afternoon when (real) local anchor Bob Palmer interviews Sandy McKees, are completely shot here.
It’s amazing, everything you see in the film is real: The place, the warehouse (yes, even the inside!), the reporter, the biker gang. Now is this fiction or fact or what; is Vanishing Point merely a movie but possibly a real life report?

Very cool info!

 

[MrLocation]

A friend pointed me to your page. Thank you for putting this up! I spent years looking for it. I see you have a link for my Flickr locations album - thank you. This week I just doubled the number of pictures I have there - https://www.flickr.com/photos/mrlocation/albums/72157632013998035

 

[831 HQT]

MrLocation,
I guess you had (another) great time this summer on the hunt for all these magic Vanishing Point locations. While my little research on VP's Denver locations is just a little piece in the whole VP puzzle, your contribution to it is really essential. So I can just qoute your 'I spent years looking for it', because I found it all on your page; everything is right there. Thanks a lot to you as well for sharing your findings with all of us, it's fantastic!

 

[MrLocation]

To 831 HQT: Thank you for your comments. I believed I found everything important for Vanishing Point over the years, but then there is always more that comes out of the woodwork in time. I believe you are the first person to have found and published the Argo's location - some 46 years after filming! I can't believe I missed "Inca" on the wall of the garage! I believe my friend Peter in NYC is the first person to have found the 'attempted rape' flashback scene. This is my picture confirming his findings. See his detective work (and his other videos) on YouTube at

 

[831 HQT]

MrLocation,
excellent gumshoeing from you and your friend Sam, er Peter Also another step forward in decoding Vanishing Point’s DNA completely.
And I couldn't imagine that Touch of Evil (famous -must see- intro shot) is connected in this way with Vanishing Point: Thanks a lot for that Peter.

Regarding the Inca Street-Name on the warehouse:
It's funny, I didn't see it too. Only after I came to the conclusion that it has to be INCA-Street, I discovered the name 'INCA' on the wall. It was always there, right in front of my eyes....

 

[831 HQT]

Just some additional info here on the Vanishing Point filming locations in Denver, trying to make the list complete.

After leaving Argo's, Kowalski speeds up the 19th Street Ramp,

...passes a 'Skaggs Drug Center' (Skaggs Drug Center, 500 16th Street (corner Glenarm Place),

(Google Streetview)

Great pictures of the drug store back in the days:
Glenarm and Sixteenth Streets, Denver :: Western History
Denver Theater :: Western History
16th Street :: Western History


...runs down an unknown boulevard (South Colorado?)

...past 'Colorado Dodge' (750 South Colorado Boulevard),

...and arrives at Dan's Corner Tavern (5302 Brighton Boulevard).

Did you notice, that while it's rainy and wet at Argo's, it's dry and dusty at Dan's Tavern? The two locations are just a handful of miles / a few minutes apart.
Have a look again at MrLocations great Vanishing Point Flickr album page for more information on the 19th Street Ramp and Dan's Tavern:
Vanishing Point (1971)


Leaving Dan's, he's back on another unknown boulevard,

...and passes the Matador Bar / Cosmopolitan Hotel at 18th Avenue and Broadway.

A few other unknown locations pop up very briefly ('Celebrity Sports Center' / 'Mr. Lucky's?)

Finally, he is back at Argo's roaring up the 19th Street Ramp again, turning left on 20th Street Viaduct only to vanish into the night on his way to the golden west.

 

[Speet]

Hey I love the research you've done on these Denver locations, including the downtown Texaco station. You even bothered to track down a shot that wasn't in the finished film! One source suggests the boulevards shown are eastbound on Colfax and southbound on Colorado, but it's the same source that said Argo's was by the Denargo Markets, at or near 20th and Fox.

Between our predecessors, and location sleuths like you, MrLocation and I (I'm Peter) we've identified nearly every Vanishing Point filming location that can be found. There are just a few left. The latest one that I've scrutinized is a toughie. We know that the film's opening minutes are all in and near Cisco, UT with one exception: Kowalski drives off the road and into an auto graveyard (shot at sundown even though it's mid-morning) for a contemplative moment. There are just enough clues to figure this one out.

The distant buttes silhouetted at screen right are Mexican Mountain and the San Rafael Swell, due west as viewed from the vicinity of Green River, Utah. This past summer MrLocaton went looking for it and he got damn close. The scrub desert land he visited and photographed on the western outskirts of town definitely looked like the right environment and the recognizable ridge line was there, but looked slightly off. The peaks and notches shift, open up or close depending on which angle they're viewed from. I examined westward Google StreetView images from a north-south road on the northwest side of Green River, observing the ridge line shift and determined a geographical latitude where they lined up like the teeth of a key, matching the screen image. A range north and east of where MrLocation did his field research, but his images did lead me to the right vicinity.

The establishing shot pans around southward and westward, giving the best overview of the location and its details, a well-worn dirt road leading in from the left (southeast) and some low hills in the middle distance to the west-southwest giving way to the distant buttes due west.

I found an online source that has 1970s-era satellite photographs of Utah. I found an area of interest that comes closest to matching the relevant details in the composite above.

A current image of the same area: the dark patches suggest accumulated wetness or overgrowth in this low spot since the 1970s (possibly due to runoff from the center-pivot irrigation disc to the west-northwest), but otherwise undisturbed and unchanged. I'm strongly confident that this is the exact location, about a half-mile north-northwest of the current Green River High School.

Google Maps I'm not in a position to visit Green River and explore the spot for a long time to come, but perhaps someone else is able to get there sooner and confirm or deny this one, before a landowner decides to develop it into another center-pivot irrigation field!

 

[831 HQT]

Congratulations Speet & MrLocation,
this is it, you guys did it, you can mark 'Operation Sundown' as mission accomplished. Guess if MrLocation hasn't been fenced-off this summer, he would have gotten to the exact spot where Kowalski took his lone decision in midst of those derelict cars.

So what's left now, what's the next Vanishing Point toughie?

The desert scenes; the 'Flat-Spot' (West-Wendover, or rather the Fallon area?)

Regarding the unknown Denver boulevards, I think that sooner or later some local will point us to the right directions.

 

[Speet]

Congratulations Speet & MrLocation,
this is it, you guys did it, you can mark 'Operation Sundown' as mission accomplished. Guess if MrLocation hasn't been fenced-off this summer, he would have gotten to the exact spot where Kowalski took his lone decision in midst of those derelict cars.

So what's left now, what's the next Vanishing Point toughie? The desert scenes; the 'Flat-Spot' (West-Wendover, or rather the Fallon area?)

Thanks, I consider 'Operation Sundown' an unfinished investigation. MrLocation was getting warmer no doubt but I've indicated a spot about one kilometer or so from where he was taking pictures, and I can't be certain of that one without finding confirming evidence. It turns out my suspected location is now roughly 300 feet inside of a fence line as well, requiring either the balls to jump the fence, the smarts to track down the landowner and seek permission to visit, or expertise with a drone camera to send a remote controlled eye to the spot. Any of which could happen someday, just not likely for a few years to come unless someone else takes up the investigation.

The off-road desert scenes:
The Challenger jumps the main road and heads off into the desert from Nevada Route 377 eastbound, turning north into the valley towards Round Mountain. Aerial shots show the Challenger getting lost and crossing its own tracks somewhere on or near the Bonneville salt flats by Wendover UT, a known shooting location. This includes the ground-level scene where Kowalski gets out and realizes he's lost, some miles south of Wendover judging by the distant appearance of the ridge line when he takes off again. Study of the 1970s Utah satellite photos just might reveal some trace of the criss-crossing tire tracks made in the film. The flat tire scene and Kowalski's encounter with the snake-wrangler may be somewhere else again, location unknown. Sarafian's DVD commentary said that scene was shot at a salt lake in Nevada just outside of Tonopah.

I wonder if his memory was hazy on that point. There are a lot of dry lakes in Nevada that look like that, both near Tonopah and much further elsewhere like the places you suggested. The snake-wrangler's next scene with J. Hovah and the faith healers is confirmed to be located along Gemfield Rd. two miles from Goldfield. Places like Alkali Lake and Crescent Dunes could be considered near Tonopah, but I haven't yet found firm evidence for either.

This search will continue from time to time, it's mostly a matter of matching the ridge lines in the background to a real place, or getting word from someone who was there. Consider from which direction the light falls on the scene as to what is likely east, south and west.

 

[831 HQT]

Thanks a lot for your interesting remarks, Speet.
I guess you're right with the Alkali Lake location for the scenes with Dean Jagger. Unfortunately there are very few good pictures of this remote area online for double checking.

But there must be a hot spring (steam spring) around there:

And yes, there is the Alkali Flat Hot Spring, but somehow the layout of this spot just doesn't seem to fit with above location.
Great picture btw. of this alternative set-up of the rattle snake scene!

 

[Speet]

Well my only support for considering the Alkali Lake area is its proximity to Tonopah and Dean Jagger's next scene at Gemfield road, about 12 miles distant. I know not to trust the presumed geographic proximity the movie suggests since it actually hopscotches all over the map. I too noticed the rising cloud in the background of that shot and assumed it was either a dust devil or kicked up by an off-road vehicle a few hundred feet in the background, which could support the possibility of someplace near Crescent Dunes.

I've seen one panoramic image from the center of Alkali Lake and the ridge lines don't even come close to matching. Google Maps

The reverse angle still image of the rattlesnake scene is valuable for cross-referencing the location to a real place. Most Google Streetview images traveling through the north-south running desert valleys of Nevada are some years old with really crummy resolution of the distant ridge lines. I came across one video taken from a vehicle heading west through the area, bypassing Tonopah by way of Silver Peak and taking the dirt roads through the valleys there, but saw nothing yet that struck me as a possible match to the film location. We gotta look harder, we know it's buried under a big W somewhere.

In the reverse angle still above, the sunlight is low like it's late afternoon. The shot used in the film, below, is under a high midday sun. Also the sandy earth with vegetation debris below them looks nothing like the dried mud ground beneath them in the film, it may be a rehearsal or alternate take of the same scene in a slightly different spot.

Another production still, one showing off more of the distant ridge line and another with better grain and color, from a slightly different angle but looks to have been taken at the same time as the used take.

Note this production still too, possibly taken during a rehearsal or alternate take. Overcast sky, no sun shadows anywhere, and flat tire prop already placed in the trunk. Some hills remain close, to the left or front of the car, an angle not shown well in the film. And the sandy earth with vegetation debris directly behind the car looks nothing like the 'baked brownie' dried mud seen behind the car in the above photo.

Kowalski stops to swap out the flat tire. This doesn't look exactly like the same spot where they staged the rattlesnake scene but there's no reason for it not to be fairly close by. Then again this could be somewhere else entirely from where Dean Jagger first appears. Tire tracks visible behind the Challenger here are not evident in any of the above images with the trunk lid open.

 

[831 HQT]

I too noticed the different structure of the desert soil in these scenes and came to the same conclusion as you:
Two different locations, but basically in the same area (I checked before the panorama picture you also mention above in all magnifications round and round and round - without any clue either).
But the main reason for assuming it to be the Alkali Dry Lake are the shots from the helicopter in the film. Comparing the Google Satellite images from this area, this is exactly the same type of landscape with these island-type spots of vegetation. I couldn't find it elsewhere in this region in this scale (that's why I also considered the Fallon area, further north the Black Rock Desert, or even the dry lakes in SE Oregon...). But why should they travel that far if they had the Alkali Lake so close?

And didn't we talk about fences before? It might be already too late to do an 'on location' search for these spots:
Cypress Development Corp. - Alkali Valley Lithium Project, Nevada - Sun Nov 20, 2016
http://www.cypressdevelopmentcorp.com/i/maps/CYP-Clayton-topo-satalite-small.jpg

Too bad; such an unique, beautiful landscape...

 

[MrLocation]

Unfortunately I don't have the time at present to help with the research for the dry lake / salt lake scenes before and with the snake catcher, but I do agree that there are two locations for this segment of the film. I have a theory about a big 'W' in the background which will take some time for me to confirm (as I think I drove past it in July) and, frustratingly, Google StreetView only has winter captures in the Carvers area, which do not look the same in summer. Thank you Speet and 831 HQT for keeping this subject ticking over. I AM reading everything you post.

 

[Speet]

I apologize for not featuring the Challenger much in this post, realizing this is first and foremost a car enthusiasts' forum.

I have a few collages of video snapshots that have been helpful.

We're looking at the same distant ridge line in each shot, establishing that the location hasn't shifted far from one to the next. I had doubts that the patrol helicopter interior shots with Paul Koslo and Bob Donner were filmed anywhere close to where the exterior shots were done but this proves my doubts wrong. It also shows morning light in one compared to late afternoon in another and overcast in the third. I am thinking more that this is somewhere north of Carvers in the Big Smoky Valley as MrLocation suspects, or Monitor Valley. All of the other shots in this sequence link to this location with the exception of the few Utah salt flats shots that precede it. Also, look at the humpbacked ridge to the left side of the last picture, it matches the same feature seen in the reverse-angle still of rattlesnake wrangling, linking that location to this site. I believe it's Mount Jefferson, which is due east of Carvers.

This is also the same place each time, whereas the first set is, to my guess, a south-southeasterly view, this ridge is to the west-northwest.

I recently discovered there's someone who is an expert on central Nevada, I should go ask for her assistance in recognizing this place: Looking For Detachment

At this point in time I'm feeling much more confident that this is indeed in the middle of the Big Smoky Valley, somewhere about 25 miles due south of Austin, 2 miles east of SR 376. Google Maps

Have a final pic from some explorer showing supporting evidence for the Big Smoky Valley:

 

[Speet]

"Person-to-person call for Kowalski. Can you hear me, Kowalski? This is to inform you of the latest developments. Correction to my last delivery..."

Consultation with Silver Fox, the geologist/blogger familiar with the landscape of central Nevada, provided results very quickly:
"Peter,

I was having a little trouble for a while, and I thought I might have to put it out for the Geoblogosphere to find – at first I was thinking of Mt. Jefferson near Round Mountain, or the southern Toiyabe Range, but I finally zoomed in. The ridge shown in several photos being Mineral Ridge really clinched it (I’ve worked there), and I knew I’d seen the hill of tilted volcanics somewhere (I’ve climbed the damned thing).

I found that the photos were all shot at the same approximate location in some silt dunes and bushes in the southern part of Big Smoky Valley. The mountains seen behind the shots are the Monte Cristo Range, Lone Mountain with a bit of the Weepah Hills, and Mineral Ridge (down near Silver Peak). I’ve attached how these look in Google Earth. Unfortunately, Google did all the roads for street view during horrible weather, so it’s hard to see anything there."

Annotated photos provided courtesy of Silver Fox:

That is Lone Mountain in the upper left corner of this production still.

"This is looking south at the Weepah Hills from the same area in the south part of Big Smoky Valley."

So this is indeed on a dry lake just outside of Tonopah as Sarafian stated. Instead of being northward up the Big Smoky Valley past Carvers, it is in the south end west of Tonopah, in the shadow of Lone Mountain. It turns out I was disoriented. What I thought was southward is more westward, and all orientation shifts nearly 90 degrees as a result. What I mistook for Mt. Jefferson is a feature of the Weepah Hills. The last image of my previous post, where the lone fellow is standing with the expanse of valley behind him is fairly close and the bit of dry lake at the left edge of the photo is the shooting location.

Mining interests are studying the dry lake there too: South Big Smoky Valley | Ultra Lithium Inc

So far I have not spotted any fences barring the way, so this location can still be visited! Google Maps

 

[831 HQT]

Congratulations Speet; you did it again!

Although I know you wouldn't agree (until you have found THE exact spot), I consider 'Operation Desert Rat" as mission accomplished.

Thanks to you and Silver Fox, we know now the region and all it takes is someone to have a real close look on that dry lake. (Be careful though with a rented car: Check for "rental cars / unpaved roads". They will cancel the insurance protection if they catch you doing Kowalski style desert runs - even if something happens later on a normal road. And with GPS, they know exactly where you've been).

Hmm; and still wondering what's that steamy / smoky thing behind Kowalski as I couldn't find a hot spring in this area? And what a great collage with two Challengers in the same picture; love it.

 

[831 HQT]

Here's another piece of the VP locations puzzle...

This chase sequence, following Kowalskis encounter with 'Speed Freak' (the Jag-driver), was taken on Alt 93 / Lincoln Highway, some 17 miles south of West Wendover, Nevada.
Kowalski and the trailing cops are speeding northbound towards West Wendover.