The Parry Brothers and the Lodge That Built Little Hollywood

The credit for turning Kanab into Little Hollywood belongs largely to a family of local entrepreneurs named the Parry brothers, who saw the potential of the film industry before almost anyone else in rural Utah.

The Parry brothers, from Salt Lake City, had bought a house in Kanab in nineteen twenty-eight. In the nineteen twenties, as the Western film genre exploded in popularity and Hollywood directors began searching for authentic desert scenery, the Parry brothers recognized an opportunity. They traveled to Hollywood and began promoting the Kanab area directly to production companies, location scouts, and studio executives. They carried photographs of the landscape and the promise of local support for cast and crew.

In the early nineteen thirties, the brothers developed the Parry Lodge in Kanab, a comfortable hotel that became the preferred accommodation for visiting stars and film crews. The lodge kept records of its celebrity guests, and over the decades the list came to include many well-known actors and directors. Most guest rooms was named for the celebrity who stayed in it. The walls were lined with photographs and memorabilia that turned the lodge into a kind of living museum of the golden age of location filmmaking.

The Parry Lodge still operates today, a rare survivor of that era. The family's entrepreneurial drive and their willingness to travel to Hollywood and make the sale created an identity for Kanab that outlasted the Westerns themselves.