Both of these movies used to be free in full on YouTube, but, y’know, crackdowns.

The Harvey Girls (1946)
“In the 1890s, the attractive wholesome Susan Bradley (Judy Garland) leaves Ohio by train to go West to a frontier town called Sand Rock, Arizona”

The town is purely fictional of course, but there’s a line or two in the movie that make it clear that Flagstaff is down the tracks a piece, and a right-sized piece.

It Came from Outer Space (1953)
“In the early 1950’s, author and amateur astronomer John Putnam (Richard Carlson) and schoolteacher Ellen Fields (Barbara Rush) watch a large meteorite crash near the small town of Sand Rock, Arizona.”

The location of this sci-fi Sand Rock is much more nebulous. It’s in Arizona. It is a small town. But, this part of Arizona is pretty famous for its meteorites. I’ve seen huge ones blazing across the sky myself in the evening. Close enough.

I liked digging out this info, especially the realization that within the same seven-year period, Hollywood made two very different major movies both set in a town called Sand Rock, Arizona.

So I claimed the name for us.

That’s how.