Believe it or not, my four year old son, born in 2002, has a fascination with the Lone Ranger television shows, filmed from 1949 to the late 1950’s-particularly the half-hour shows starring Clayton Moore as the Lone Ranger and Jay Silverheels as Tonto. We have a collection of black-and-white Lone Ranger DVD’s, and my son runs around on his stick horse with a mask. Because he wanted me to print out some pictures of the Lone Ranger, I started to look up Lone Ranger and Tonto fan sites on the internet, and here are a few of the best ones:
1. http://www.lonerangerfanclub.com. This website is very complete. On the home page it includes information about the annual Lone Ranger convention, a Lone Ranger forums link, and information on dressing up like the Lone Ranger. You have the option of subscribing to the Lone Ranger fan club for $30 a year (U.S.) with a $20 a year renewal. Membership includes a one-year subscription to The Silver Bullet, a wallet-sized membership card, an 8×10 membership certificate, an 8×10 color photo, and a bumper sticker. Other pages on the site include pages dedicated to the history of the Lone Ranger and Tonto (and of the various men who acted these parts), Lone Ranger news, collectibles, and Lone Ranger radio. There is also a wonderful page of full-color and black and white photographs of the Lone Ranger and Tonto. Unlike some of the other sites, there is a lot of information about Tonto on this site.
2. http://endeavorcomics.com/largent/lr1.html The top of this website reads that this is one man’s way of “keeping the legend of the Lone Ranger and Tonto alive.” Since over 300,000 people have visited this page so far, apparently his mission is succeeding. This is in some ways a nostalgic page, as the author talks about “a simpler time, when I believed that there was a man who, with his Indian companion, was out there righting all the wrongs and teaching villains that greed and prejudice will fall before justice in the end.” There are links on this page to history of the Lone Ranger, the Lone Ranger’s Creed, the Lone Ranger’s origin, and a few other items of interest.
3. http://members.tripod.com/~ClaytonMoore/index.html This website is dedicated to the shows in which Clayton Moore acted as the Lone Ranger. On the first page of this site, you can play the famous William Tell Overture, the theme song of the Lone Ranger show, and read the Ranger’s Creed. Unique features to this site include a petition to get Clayton Moore on a U.S. postage stamp, and a synopsis of television episodes.
4. http://www.geocities.com/TelevisionCity/7286/home.html This is another website with basic information on the Lone Ranger (the Clayton Moore series). It includes the text of a radio interview with Clayton Moore. There is detailed information on episodes 1, 2, and 3 of the Lone Ranger show.
