El Mirage Dry Lake

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El Mirage Dry Lake

El Mirage Dry Lake is a dry lake bed in the Mojave Desert of California in the United States. The lake is located about nine miles (14 km) west-northwest of the town of Adelanto and 10 miles (16 km) north of Highway 18 in San Bernardino County.

The dry lake is approximately six miles (10 km) long. El Mirage Dry Lake is part of the El Mirage OHV Recreation Area. It is also known to be an extremely popular filming location for automobile commercials.

For 50 years the lakebed has been used by the Southern California Timing Association for timed speed runs. The club also runs the Bonneville Salt Flats speed runs.

In the movie "Lethal Weapon" (1987), a famous scene in which officer Murtaugh (Danny Glover) tries to get his kidnapped daughter back, is entirely filmed at El Mirage. In addition to being an attractive filming location, the unique flat terrain allowed the pilot of a Bell 206 Jetranger helicopter to perform a very difficult sideway landing at very low altitude and very high airspeed.

In Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), her son John (Edward Furlong) and the Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) drive away from Los Angeles and South towards the border; this whole desert sequence was shot at the El Mirage dry lake. Most noticeably is the orange sunlight (very visible during Sarah's nuclear nightmare), and the sparse vegetation.

Shania Twain's music video for "That Don't Impress Me Much" was filmed at El Mirage as was the 1997 Star Wars mockumentary, "Troops".

Josh Groban shot photos and music video frames for his album, "Awake", including "February Song" and "You Are Loved".

Shia LaBeouf's cover of a July issue of Vanity Fair was also shot here.

Also, El Mirage is often a filming location selected for movies and television programs where high speed time trials are depicted. Examples of this are the jet car sequence from The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension [1], and a sequence in Herbie Fully Loaded.