`DR. QUINN' BIDS SAD FAREWELL TO WESTERN FILM SET IN AGOURA HILLS.

Byline: Kevin F. Sherry Daily News Staff Writer

``Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman'' became history this week, as the canceled show packed its bags and rode out of town.

By Thursday, six tractor-trailer loads of wardrobe items will be gone. This morning, the real steam engine from the set is scheduled to be loaded onto the back of a truck and driven away.

``The train station has become a long-term, permanent addition to Paramount Ranch,'' said Alice Allen, special park uses manager for the National Park Service. ``But the train and the tracks will go.''

The train represents the last major project for the show's dismantling, which has filmed at the Paramount Ranch location for the past 6-1/2 years, said John Liberti, the show's producer and unit production manager.

``Basically, we're putting the town back the way it was before we got there,'' Liberti said.

Now 80 percent of Paramount Ranch's 700 acres are clear, and fall fashion catalogs and car commercials are lined up to film, Allen said. ``Dr. Quinn'' is supposed to be gone by Aug. 27, she said.

``Paramount Ranch, when it comes to filming, is going to go back on the market,'' Allen said.

Just 10 original buildings from the 1920s ranch will remain after the demolition is complete.

``They just took down the old homestead,'' said Shelly Gonzales, vice president of operations of Roadside Lumber, which supplied the show with the wood to build the home. ``I'm just heartbroken.''

Many people wonder why such nice-looking buildings cannot remain on the site, even though they are not quite what they seem. Liberti even had one person offer to buy Dr. Quinn's log cabin.

``Everybody forgets that it's moviemaking,'' he said. ``It wasn't real logs.''

Along with Dr. Quinn's home, the hotel spa has been removed, with the church and the school buildings soon to follow, Allen said. The Park Service and CBS have good reasons for taking down each building, she said.

During the pilot episode, the church was just a two-faced facade, Allen said. After the series got going, workers added walls and a roof.

``It was never built with a foundation,'' she said. ``It's just a shell.''

The show's cast and crew forged strong relationships with several area businesses.

Local drug stores kept the set nurse stocked with poison oak lotion and feed stores fed the show's 30 horses, Allen said. Stores supplied 1,500 pounds of ice every week and 30 cases of beverages a day for the 60 to 120 people who could be on the set at any one time, she said.

Once a month, with three or four days' warning, the ``Dr. Quinn'' people would spend $400 to $700 on 50 half-chickens, 50 slabs of ribs and all the accessories, said Shawn Payton, assistant manager at Tony Roma's.

``It was like, five gallons, six gallons of beans at one time,'' Payton said.

Payton said he expects other productions to take up where ``Dr. Quinn'' left off. Recently the production crew for the new ``Star Trek'' movie ordered about $1,000 worth of food, he said.

``It really helps your business out, even though it might be a once-a-month thing,'' Payton said.

The crew spent countless dollars at Gonzales' hardware store through the years.

``They were in here three times a day,'' Gonzales said. ``We know them by first name.''

Now, when crew members drop by, Gonzales knows the tools they purchase are being used to destroy the same set her store's materials helped to build.

``It's just a real dismal feeling now when they come in,'' she said. ``We certainly are just generally sad to see the show go off the air.''

Locals have both economic and emotional ties to the show, mainly because the ``Dr. Quinn'' set was open to public viewing, Allen said.

While working in temperatures that ranged from 15 degrees in the winter to 110 degrees in the summer, the show has seen more than its share of biblical disasters, from yellowjackets to poison oak, Allen said.

``In the 6-1/2 years they've been there, they've literally been through fire and flood,'' she said. ``The sets, because they're old and wood, they just rocked and rolled with the Northridge Earthquake.''

The park's relationship with ``Dr. Quinn'' could become a model for other park-entertainment ventures, she said.

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Photo

PHOTO (Color) Star Jane Seymour and the rest of the cast and crew of ``Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman'' are in the process of saying goodbye to the show's frontier-era set at Paramount Ranch.