Michele StuevenOne hundred years ago, millions of moviegoers saw Utah on the screen for the very first time in the silent film Deadwood Coach starring Tom Mix in the heyday of westerns. The city of Kanab became known as “Little Hollywood” when legions of filmmakers arrived to take advantage of the panoramic landscapes. Utah and the Western genre are as popular today with the Hollywood crowd as ever.
Southern Utah has served as the backdrop for thousands of films since the 1920s — from wild west classics like Stagecoach, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Outlaw Josey Wales, The Lone Ranger, Gunsmoke, and Death Valley Days to modern favorites like High School Musical 2, Yellowstone and most recently Kevin Costner’s Horizon: An American Saga.” The latter was filmed on location as well as in a makeshift studio at the old St. George Airport. Costner currently is building a new state-of-the-art multimillion-dollar facility next to the new airport, investing his future in the Beehive State.
“I don’t know that I chose Utah,” Costner writes in the forward of James V. D’Arc’s centennial edition of When Hollywood Came to Utah. “What I do believe is that Utah had been speaking to me for a long time, since I was a little boy, really. Whispering. Showing off its quiet beauty. Confident that I would someday come here. That I would one day come and that it would work its magic so deeply into my soul that it would mark me forever.”
Ancient dunes and lava flows, Snow Canyon State Park (Matt Morgan)
Surrounded by The Grand Staircase, a vast sequence of ancient sedimentary rock layers that stretch south from Bryce Canyon National Park through Zion National Park and into Grand Canyon National Park, the landscape is a cinematographer’s dream.
A Film Buff’s Tour
Many of these filming locations are open to the public and many are free. Beginning with Kanab with the filming of Deadwood Coach, the Parry Lodge became a home away from home for countless film casts and crews, including golden age Hollywood royalty like John Wayne (who contributed to building the pool at the lodge), Gregory Peck, Sammy Davis Jr., Frank Sinatra, Clint Eastwood, Maureen O’Hara, Dean Martin, Roy Rogers, and Ronald Reagan. The lodge was opened as a roadside motel in the summer of 1931 by the Parry brothers, and over the past century, has housed crews for more than 100 films.
“My first introduction to Hollywood as a country boy was when I was 13 working as a bellhop at the Parry Lodge, ” local film historian and fifth-generation Kanabian Dennis Judd tells L.A. Weekly over a buffet breakfast at the lodge. “It was in the middle of the movie craze and was one of the most coveted jobs in southern Utah because you met movie stars and made good tips.
Local Kanab Film Historian, Dennis Judd at The Parry Lodge (Michele Stueven)
“One day Victor Mature walked in the front door with his shirt unbuttoned down to his belly button, had a big gold cross around his neck, and was wearing alligator shoes,” says Judd. “I always had to make sure they had plenty of ice on their dressers when they came off location for cocktails. They taught me how to mix drinks. The Rat Pack stayed here when they filmed Sergeants 3 and used the high school across the street as a helipad to fly back and forth to Vegas. In exchange for the access, the Pack attended the high school’s homecoming and donated thousands of dollars to the school, which was used to buy new uniforms and equipment for the sports teams.”
New to Kanab and seemingly in the middle of nowhere is the Once Upon a Time in America Museum, Jason and Nicol Grossman’s vast collection of Hollywood memorabilia that took years to accumulate including cars, autographs and artifacts, plus an entire hall dedicated to filming in Southern Utah/Kanab, filled with original movie posters and signed photos. There’s also a saloon and gift shop packed with fun stuff.
To make your own movie or create one-of-a-kind IG moments everyone will envy, take a guided hike through Peek-a-Boo Slot Canyon with Dreamland Tours and explore the dramatic red rock slot canyon known locally as Peekaboo. The half-mile canyon is one of the easiest slots to walk through in Southern Utah, where brilliant red Navajo sandstone walls tower about 80 feet over a narrow slot that has been carved into abstract shapes over the millennia by flowing water over sand dunes.
Peek-a-Boo Slot Canyon (Dreamland Tours)
You can also visit the Kanab Movie Fort with Adventure Tour Company and tour a private canyon and destination of the old movie fort, a location where more than 35 movies have been filmed including the Apple Dumpling Gang, the wacky 60’s sitcom F Troop, and most recently, HBO’s second season of Westworld. Kanab is known as a dark sky destination, and the tour company also offers a star- and satellite-gazing s’mores experience by the fire.
Not only is the Best Friends Sanctuary in Angel Canyon the healing home for up to 1,600 dogs, cats, birds, bunnies, horses, pigs, and other animals, but it’s also what’s left of the old Kanab Movie Ranch, where they filmed The Lone Ranger, Death Valley Days, Lassie and Route 66, just to name a few. Celebrating its 40th year as the largest sanctuary of its kind in the U.S., Best Friends has become the heart of a collaborative no-kill movement and a model for the future of animal welfare. Guided tours of the 3,700-acre property and its inhabitants are available, as well as lodging and volunteer opportunities.
An extension of the sanctuary is the Best Friends Roadhouse and Mercantile, which offers 40 rooms and suites where pets are not just welcome, but encouraged. No pets? No problem. With enough advance notice, you can give a homeless dog or cat a night of company by hosting a sleepover with a pet from Best Friends Animal Sanctuary. All the people food on the property is vegan, and a stay includes two free all-you-can-eat vegan lunch buffet tickets for Angel Village Café at the sanctuary.
Grafton Ghost Town, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (20th Century Fox)
Journey your way through the dramatic Zion National Park en route to Costner Country and make a truly nostalgic stop at Grafton Ghost Town. One of the most visited ghost towns in the West, Grafton is right outside Zion National Park and was established in 1859 by Mormon settlers who built their homes here in hopes of flourishing cotton crops and farming. It’s been a featured location in several films, including 1929’s In Old Arizona, the first talkie filmed outdoors, and the classic Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid moment in the bedroom and bike ride with Paul Newman and Katherine Ross.
Many other scenes from the Butch Cassidy film as well as Horizon were shot in nearby stunningly visual environs, like Snow Canyon State Park and Petrified Sand Dunes, located at the edge of the Mojave Desert, Great Basin, and Colorado Plateau with vibrant orange rock formations, petrified dunes and unexpected pockets of water. Snow Canyon’s Navajo sandstone cliffs share the same history and geology as Zion National Park to the east, cut by water and sculpted by wind and time. 
Disney Channel’s “High School Musical 2” stars Corbin Bleu as “Chad Danforth,” Monique Coleman as “Taylor McKessie,” Vanessa Hudgens as “Gabriella Montez,” Zac Efron as “Troy Bolton,” Lucas Grabeel as “Ryan Evans,” and Ashley Tisdale as “Sharpay Evans.” (DISNEY CHANNEL/ BOB D’AMICO)
Inn At Entrada, film location for High School Musical 2 (Michele Stueven)
In 2007, the Inn at Entrada was transformed into Lava Spring Country Club for the filming of Disney’s High School Musical 2. The movie’s premiere was seen by a total of more than 18 million viewers in the United States, almost 10 million more than its predecessor, making it the highest-rated Disney Channel movie of all time.
If you plan enough ahead of time, you can book the rooms that Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens lived in during filming. Their room numbers correspond with their ages at the time of filming (#1902 for Efron, #1800 for Hudgens.) Scenes were filmed throughout the resort at the pool, clubhouse, golf course, and kitchen. Songs like Fabulous, Gotta Go My Own Way, All For One were shot by the pool, You Are The Music In Me in the clubhouse and Bet On It on the golf course.
“Hollywood is more of an idea now than a location,” Yellowstone actor Denim Richards tells L.A. Weekly, who spent the first three seasons of the show filming near Park City. “It’s become more globalized and compelling and less insulated. Hollywood is going through a weird transition right now and we don’t know how it’s going to play out, but there are going to be a lot more opportunities and incentives to shoot outside of the town itself.”
The first installment of Horizon: An American Saga comes out today on premium video on demand.
Denim Richards on Yellowstone, which returns November 10 (Courtesy Paramount Network)
Kanab Movie Fort, HBO Westworld location (Michele Stueven)
The Deadwood Coach 1924 (Courtesy of Fox Film Corporation)