This film was the first to have media ads taken out campaigning for an Academy Award. The ads depicted MGMs Leo the Lion holding an Oscar, reading "You've given so much, Leo - now get ready to receive!" Despite the ads (or perhaps because of them) the film received no Academy Award nominations.
The gazebo in this film, a symbol of the typical American town, was built specially for the movie. That gazebo was gifted to the city by MGM and is still in use in Grafton Commons.
Will Rogers planned to play Nat Miller in this film, but eventually backed out of the project, enabling him to make the ill-fated airplane trip with Wiley Post to Alaska. The plane crashed, killing them both.
Ah Wilderness! (1935) was remade in 1948 as a musical, Summer Holiday (1948). Mickey Rooney appears in both versions, as the youngest brother, Tommy Miller, in the original film, and as the oldest brother, RIchard Miller, in the remake.
The poem Richard wrote to Murial that Sid reads with Nat at the table is from "Anactoria" by Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909).