Easy Rider: Los Angeles to New Orleans

The road trip begins in Los Angeles. Wyatt and Billy have smuggled cocaine from Mexico, and here they sell their haul for a large sum of money. The cash is stuffed into a plastic tube hidden inside the Stars & Stripes-painted fuel tank of Wyatt's California-style chopper, and the pair ride east, aiming to reach New Orleans in time for Mardi Gras. The drug sell-on scene was shot at Los Angeles International Airport, in the first half of 1968.

Near the start of the film, a short clip shows Wyatt and Billy on Route 66 in Flagstaff, Arizona, passing a large figure of a lumberjack. Flagstaff scenes were filmed on Milton Road and Route 66 as well as near Sunset Crater. The statue has since moved indoors: it now stands inside the J. Lawrence Walkup Skydome on the campus of Northern Arizona University.

Location precision: The clip was filmed along Route 66 and Milton Road in Flagstaff; the pin marks the Skydome, where the lumberjack statue now stands.

The riders cross Monument Valley, the screen favourite made famous by John Ford. It is a cluster of sandstone buttes, the largest reaching 1,000 ft above the valley floor, and it is one of the film's locations. Most of Easy Rider was shot outside in natural lighting, a choice Dennis Hopper defended with a one-liner: "God is a great gaffer."

Location precision: The film names the valley as a location but no exact viewpoint; the pin marks Monument Valley itself.

The hitchhiker Wyatt picks up invites the pair to his commune, where they stay for the rest of the day. As they leave, he gives Wyatt some LSD to share. The commune on screen is a stand-in: the New Buffalo commune near Taos did not permit shooting, so the set was recreated from pictures at a site overlooking Malibu Canyon on Piuma Canyon Road, in the Santa Monica Mountains.

Location precision: The commune exists only in the story; the scene was recreated on Piuma Canyon Road, and the pin marks Piuma Road.

Later, riding along with a parade in New Mexico, Wyatt and Billy are arrested and thrown in jail. There they befriend lawyer George Hanson, played by Nicholson, who will join them on the road. The parade was filmed in the tiny frontier town of Las Vegas, New Mexico, on US Route 85 about 50 miles east of Santa Fe, and the old jail's exterior is on Bridge Street.

Visitor guidance: The exterior of the old jail can still be seen at 157 Bridge Street in Las Vegas, New Mexico.

Stopping to eat at a small-town Louisiana diner, the trio attracts the attention of the locals. The local men, including the sheriff, make denigrating comments and taunts. The restaurant scenes with Fonda, Hopper and Nicholson were shot in Morganza, and the men and girls in them were Morganza locals. The cafe stood on the east side of Gayden Road, just south of Campbell Street, but has been torn down.

Location precision: The cafe has been demolished; the pin marks the Gayden Road area of Morganza.

In New Orleans the friends end up in a French Quarter cemetery, where all four ingest the LSD the hitchhiker had given to Wyatt. It was shot at St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, at Basin Street, which opened in 1789. The New Orleans Mardi Gras scene was actually the first in the can, and the New Orleans sequences were shot on 16mm film.

Visitor guidance: The cemetery is closed to the general public; the nonprofit Save Our Cemeteries and commercial businesses offer tours for a fee.

The next morning, Billy and Wyatt are overtaken on a two-lane country road by two local men in an older pickup truck, and the two riders are shot. The scene was filmed on Louisiana Highway 105 North, just outside Krotz Springs, and the town records the final scene as filmed a few miles north. The last shot shows the motorcycle burning as the credits roll over the scene.

Location precision: The exact stretch of road isn't documented; the pin marks Krotz Springs, a few miles south of the filming.