RIGHT SPEAK: Alamo Village Movie Set used by John Wayne Fading Away

The weather and elements are taking a toll on the famous movie set, best known for the Oscar-nominated 1960 movie 'The Alamo.'

Time and Mother Nature are threatening to dismantle the Alamo. Not the original, but the replica 18th-century Spanish mission and Old West movie set John Wayne built for his Oscar-nominated 1960 movie and that for decades was a tourist mecca and film production site.

"It's not just something that represents history to a movie set - it is now history for sure," says Rich Curilla, the one-man curator and custodian of the now-closed Alamo Village.

Alamo Village, a 400-acre plot of land about 120 miles west of San Antonio, was carved out of a large ranch in the late 1950s for Wayne's directorial debut. Starring Richard Widmark as Jim Bowie and Wayne as Davy Crockett, "The Alamo" had an estimated $12 million budget, huge for its time.

The 4-foot-thick Alamo facade was modeled off a 1936 map of the historic building - drawn up for the Texas centennial that year - and set construction took nearly two years. Unlike the real Alamo, which is dwarfed by taller buildings in the heart of San Antonio, the view from Wayne's Alamo offered a panorama of iconic Texas and Western images.

"To Hollywood, a movie set is just a means to an end," said Curilla, a film and Alamo historian who spent his summers in college during the late 1960s at the site and began working there full-time in 1988. "I think Wayne was cognizant of building a monument and not just a movie set."

In its heyday, Wayne's Alamo hosted Jimmy Stewart, Dean Martin, Raquel Welch and even Willie Nelson. It's where James Arness reprised his famous Matt Dillon role in a "Gunsmoke" TV movie.