Film History in Kanab

Known at Little Hollywood since the first shooting of Deadwood Coach by Tom Mix and Tony the Wonder Horse in 1924, and its reputation as a film location was lifted greatly when Cecile B. DeMille made Union Pacific there in 1939, starring Barbara Stanwyck, Joel McCrea, and Robert Preston. It was followed by John Ford and his Drums Along the Mohawk, produced by Darryl F. Zanuck and starring Henry Fonda and Claudette Colbert in 1939 as well.

During the depression, the film industry kept the small farming town of Kanab alive.

Kanab would host over one hundred film crews over the years. Movies and television shows such as Stagecoach (1939), The Lone Ranger, Death Valley Days, Gunsmoke, Daniel Boone, El Dorado (1966), Planet of the Apes (1968), Mackenna's Gold, Western Union (1941), The Desperadoes (1943), Buffalo Bill (1944), Westward the Women (1952), Tomahawk Trail (1957), Fort Bowie (1958), Sergeants Three (1962), Duel at Diablo (1966), Ride in the Whirlwind (1965), The Shooting (1966), and The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976).

The Hollywood actors got along with their Mormon opposites. The Mormons opened bars that served alcohol and some of the Hollywood stars, such as Frank Sinatra, paid for the swimming pool to be built at Parry Lodge, as well as the uniforms for the high school football team.

The film industry in Kanab began to wane after the Outlaw Josey Wales was filmed there; a film by Disney based on the book, "John Carter of Mars," was one of the most recent.

Photo above: Western film set at Kanab's Little Hollywood Museum of Western Film, 2019, Mramoeba. Courtesy Wikipedia Commons C.C. 4.0.

Kanab History

First settled by Europeans in 1864, ten Mormon families founded the town six years later. It grew slowly, with Fort Kanab built on the east side of Kanab Creek for defense against Indian attack. It was also used as a base for exploring the area around it that would later become famous and made into national parks and monuments. What does the name mean? Kanab is the Paiute word for "place of the willows."

It is located on the Colorado Plateau along Kanab Creek. It has a borderline semi-arid climate, wetter than most towns in the area with snowfall that varies wildly, from none to a record 74.5 inches in 2001. It is hot.

Prior to it becoming a movie and tourist town, a prospector, Freddy Crystal, thought the mountains around Kanab were the sites of Montezuma's treasure. He and others dug from 1914 until his plan to drain a lake, because an underground cave might contain it, was stopped by the government.

Kanab has always been a small town, about four hundred and nine people lived there when the first farmhouse Parry Lodge was opened; even today, 2019 census estimate, there are only four thousand nine hundred and thirty-one residents.

Who gave it the name, Little Hollywood? William Wellman, an American actor and film director.

Photo above: Bureau of Land Management Visitor Center in Kanab, 2020, BLM Employee. Courtesy Bureau of Land Management

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More to See in Kanab

If you want to see more about Little Hollywood, today you can visit some of the sets and history at the Little Hollywood Land Movie Set Museum and Trading Post, located on Center Street, which is currently for sale.

Other unique attractions include Moqui Cave, a privately owned cavern five miles north of town. It was supposedly used by the Anasazi people as a food shelter, by Kanab residents during prohibition as a speakeasy, and opened as a tourist attraction in 1951.

Other in town attractions include the Kanab Heritage House Museum, built in 1894, Denny's Wigwam gift shop and restaurant, the Kanab Museum, and lots of restaurants of whimsy and good food.

Photo above: Stagecoach advertising Denny's Wigwam Gift Shop, 1987, John Margolies. Courtesy Library of Congress.