Little Hollywood Kanab
The back lot years
Little Hollywood, and what is left of it.
More than a hundred movies and television productions were shot in the country around Kanab between the 1920s and the 1970s. This is the honest version: what was filmed here, what you can still walk into, and what quietly fell down decades ago.
Start here
A hundred pictures, fifty years.
Between the 1920s and the 1970s more than a hundred movies and television productions were shot in the canyons around Kanab. That is the whole reason for the nickname, and it is a genuinely large number for a town this size in country this remote.
Stagecoach was filmed out here. So were Gunsmoke, The Lone Ranger and Planet of the Apes. The draw was simple: red rock that photographed like nowhere else, enormous skies, and a town willing to accommodate a film crew a very long way from a studio.
The stars came with the productions. Parry Lodge housed them, and the guest list over the years ran from John Wayne through Frank Sinatra, Charlton Heston and Clint Eastwood, and much later Kiefer Sutherland and Willem Dafoe. It is not a museum piece; the lodge has been taking travellers since 1931 and still is.
The museum
Free, and built out of real sets.
The Little Hollywood Museum sits at the west end of Center Street. It costs nothing, it is run as a nonprofit, and the thing that makes it worth an hour is that the buildings are actual sets moved here rather than reconstructions built to look like them. You can walk into them.
It runs from about March through December rather than year round, which catches out the occasional winter visitor. Hours are generous in season. There is a gift shop and, in the busier months, some living history that leans cheerfully into the western thing.
Pair it with a walk along Center Street. For a town of five thousand the restaurant row is unusually good, and the reason is directly upstream of the film years: the productions built hotel and hospitality capacity here decades before the national parks tourism arrived to use it.
It is not open all year. The museum generally runs from March into December. If you are here in deep winter, check before you build an afternoon around it.
The honest part
What is gone, and what was never here.
A lot of what was built for the cameras out in the canyons has not survived. Sets were temporary by design, weather in this country is hard on timber, and a good deal of what remains stands on private ground where there is no public access. Anyone who tells you that you can drive out and wander through the old western towns is overselling it.
What you can do is see the sets that were saved, at the museum, and drive the country that is in the frames, which is public and largely unchanged. That is a better afternoon than chasing ruins, and it is the version locals will point you at.
The film years also fold into the calendar. Western Legends fills Center Street in late August with a parade, music and a rodeo, and it exists because of this history rather than in spite of it. The dates move by a week or so, so confirm with the city before booking around it.
The sets were built to last a season. The canyons behind them were not built at all, and they are the part that is still exactly as it looks on film.
Keep reading
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Kanab, from a local
The town itself: the position, the film years, the permit culture and the seasons.
Read the pageQuick answers
The film years, answered.
Because more than a hundred movies and television productions were filmed in and around the town between the 1920s and the 1970s, including Stagecoach, Gunsmoke, The Lone Ranger and Planet of the Apes. Parry Lodge housed the stars during those years, and the nickname stuck.
Yes. The museum sits at the west end of Center Street, costs nothing to enter, and is run as a nonprofit. What makes it worth the time is that it is built around actual movie sets that were moved and preserved rather than reconstructions, so you can walk into them.
No. It generally runs from about March through December rather than year round, which catches out the occasional deep winter visitor. Check before you build an afternoon around it if you are here in January or February.
Some of them, at the museum. Out in the canyons much less survives than people expect. Sets were temporary by design, the weather here is hard on timber, and a good deal of what remains sits on private ground with no public access. The canyons themselves are the part that is unchanged, and most of that country is public.
Yes, at Parry Lodge, which has been taking travellers since 1931 and housed the stars through the filming years. The swimming pool there was built in 1956 at his request. The guest list over the decades also included Frank Sinatra, Charlton Heston and Clint Eastwood.
The canyons are still exactly as they filmed.
That is the thing about this country: the sets went, and the backdrop did not. If you are weighing a move to a town with this much history for its size, I am glad to talk it through.