<Li> Ricca Allen as Tolliver family member </Li> <Li> Fern Emmett as Lena Tolliver </Li> <P> With principal on - location photography beginning in mid-October 1935 in Chatsworth, at Big Bear Lake (in the San Bernardino Mountains), and at the Santa Susana Pass in California, recreating the rural and mountain locale of the novel . The film was the first feature - length film to be shot in three - strip Technicolor on location . </P> <P> Considered a technological success, The Trail of the Lonesome Pine was not the first film to utilize the new color process but integrated its use successfully, and was a harbinger of future developments . "The significance of this achievement is not to be minimized . It means that color need not shackle the cinema, but may give it fuller expression . It means that we can doubt no longer the inevitability of the color film or scoff at those who believe that black - and - white photography is tottering on the brink of that limbo of forgotten things which already has swallowed the silent picture ." </P>

Where was the trail of the lonesome pine filmed