When Hollywood Came to Utah

By James V. D'Arc

A profusely illustrated history of moviemaking in Utah, from the early twentieth century to the present.

For more than 100 years, the magnificent scenery and locales of Utah have played host to hundreds of Hollywood films and TV episodes, including memorable films such as The Searchers, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Planet of the Apes, Easy Rider, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Thelma & Louise, and Forrest Gump.

This book gives readers the inside scoop on how these films were made, what happened on and off set, and more. Author and film historian James V. D’Arc provides a wealth of trivial factoids for movie buffs, including anecdotes about the interactions of Utah locals with actors and crew.

New and updated text and photos have been added to the previous edition (When Hollywood Came to Town) to bring this edition up to date with movies and TV shows filmed in Utah since 2010.

James V. D’Arc was curator of the BYU Motion Picture Archive at the Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, for 41 years. He lives in Orem, Utah.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gibbs Smith
• Release date: Dec 24, 2019
• ISBN: 9781423652816

Book preview

When Hollywood Came To Utah

James V. D’Arc

with a new Foreword, Introduction, and Filmography

Text © 2010, 2019 James V. D’Arc

This book was originally published in 2010 under the title When Hollywood Came to Town: A History of Moviemaking in Utah.

This book is a work of scholarship, unrelated to any trademark status, and represents no venture of any films or television properties mentioned. Referential usage of images is not to be construed as a challenge to any trademark status.

Published by

Gibbs Smith

P.O. Box 667

Layton, Utah 84041

1.800.835.4993 orders

www.gibbs-smith.com

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019936915

ISBN: 978-1-4236-5281-6

Page 1: Vintage map of Utah published in Utah: Land of Endless Scenic Discovery, a pamphlet published by the Utah Publicity & Industrial Development (1948). Note Kanab’s identification as Utah’s Movie Land. The road cited as 91 is now Interstate 15. (Credit: Kanab Heritage Museum, BYU Special Collections) Title Page: A box canyon coursed by the river at Paria serves as a gorgeous setting for rustled cattle in Western Union. (Credit: BYU Special Collections) Above: Extras have lunch on the set of Wagon Master. (Credit: Taylor-Skewes Collection)

In loving memory of Patricia M. D’Arc the woman of my dreams

Warner Baxter, as the Arizona Kid, serenades Mona Maris amid the splendor of Zion National Park. (Credit: Twentieth Century-Fox)

Deanna Durbin and crew on the set of Can’t Help Singing at Cedar Breaks National Monument. (Credit: Marc Wanamaker/Bison Archives)

Contents

Forewords

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Scene 1: Iron County 1924–1958

Cedar City and the Parry Brothers

Tom Mix and The Deadwood Coach

The Shepherd of the Hills, Ramona, and the Battle of Cedar Breaks

Nevada (1927)

Glory Days for Cedar City

Drums Along the Mohawk (1939)

Brigham Young (1940)

Can’t Help Singing (1944)

Proud Rebel (1958)

Scene 2: Washington County 1927–1979

From Silents to Sound

In Old Arizona (1929)

The Arizona Kid (1930)

The Dude Ranger (1934)

The Bad Man of Brimstone (1937)

Utah’s Centennial Film: Ramrod or Hamrod?

The Conqueror

Vanished Americans

The King and Four Queens (1956)

Run of the Arrow (1957)

They Came to Cordura (1959)

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)

Jeremiah Johnson (1972)

The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing (1973)

The Eiger Sanction (1975)

The Car (1977)

The Electric Horseman (1979)

Scene 3: Kane County 1928–1978

Utah’s Hollywood

In Glorious Technicolor!

Western Union (1941)

The Desperadoes (1943)

My Friend Flicka (1943)

Thunderhead, Son of Flicka (1945)

Green Grass of Wyoming (1948)

Smoky (1946)

Sierra (1950)

Stallion Canyon (1949)

Red Canyon (1949)

Calamity Jane and Sam Bass (1949)

William Wellman’s Buffalo Bill

The Rustler from Kanab

Westward the Women (1951)

Bugles in the Afternoon (1952)

The Lion and the Horse (1952)

Pony Express (1953)

Howard Koch and Bel-Air Productions

The Yellow Tomahawk (1954)

Fort Yuma (1955)

Quincannon, Frontier Scout (1956)

The Dalton Girls (1957)

The Girl in Black Stockings (1957)

Sergeants 3 (1962)

Reel Change in Kanab

Fort Dobbs (1958)

The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965)

Duel at Diablo (1966)

Planet of the Apes (1968)

MacKenna’s Gold (1969)

Rough Night in Jericho (1967)

One Little Indian (1973)

The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)

The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again (1979)

Scene 4: San Juan County 1925–1995

John Ford’s Monument Valley

Stagecoach (1939)

My Darling Clementine (1946)

Fort Apache (1948)

She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949)

The Searchers (1956)

Cheyenne Autumn (1964)

Scene 5: Grand County 1949–1997

Moab Means Movies

Rio Grande (1950)

The Battle at Apache Pass (1952)

Taza, Son of Cochise (1954)

Border River (1954)

Smoke Signal (1955)

Canyon Crossroads (1955)

Warlock (1959)

Ten Who Dared (1960)

The Comancheros (1961)

Rio Conchos (1964)

The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965)

Blue (1968)

The Apocalypse in Moab

Scene 6: Northern Utah 1908–2003

Capitol Moviemaking

Epilogue

Notes

Bibliography

Motion Pictures and Television Productions Made in Utah

Forewords

My first picture, Fort Dobbs, was shot around Kanab, Utah, with Virginia Mayo, Brian Keith, and Richard Eyer. I also made Gold of the Seven Saints, with Roger Moore, Chill Wills, and Robert Middleton, in Moab, Utah. We shot much of the picture in Arches National Park.

I was fascinated with the vast open country which is punctuated with monolithic mesas towering above the desert floor. Picturesque sandstone formations look both inviting and foreboding at the same time. Many people from around the world were introduced to the stunning beauty of this part of the west by virtue of the films shot here. It is also a well-known fact that this was once the home of many Native American tribes, and there are new finds relating to their existence surfacing all the time.

What will unfold as you read When Hollywood Came to Utah is how these and dozens of other motion pictures were made on these gorgeous Utah locations. The behind-the-scenes stories of the film stars, the crews, and the local Utah residents themselves who all helped to make Utah the Little Hollywood for nearly a century will be a surprise, as they were to me. This book will motivate you to see those movies that you haven’t seen and will also motivate you to discover the more familiar titles all over again.

Enjoy!

(Credit: BYU Special Collections)

Having grown up in Utah, I have spent hours camping and hiking across the state, driving through the mazes, slot canyons, and vistas I now recognize from The Searchers , Stagecoach , Thelma & Louise , and Westworld . Being out in those wide-open spaces, it made perfect sense that Utah has come to represent The West, and that rugged, independent spirit that itself is so American. Utah’s landscapes, from St. George to Moab to the Bonneville Salt Flats, have lent their iconic beauty to countless films over the last hundred years.

James D’Arc’s love of Utah and movies is contagious and my first edition copy of When Hollywood Came to Town has become dog-eared and worn as it sits on my desk, a reference for all of the thousands of stories and people who have worked on films in Utah: The stories of passionate politicians and community leaders who lobbied Hollywood to come to Utah; the stories of locals who worked on set as extras, caterers, or carpenters; and the stories of Hollywood icons who were overwhelmed by the beauty and resources found in Utah.

Today, Utah’s film industry is thriving, creating thousands of jobs, injecting millions of dollars into our economy, and inspiring a whole new generation of film lovers and filmmakers to discover Utah.

—Virginia Pearce

Director, Utah Film Commission

March 2019

Acknowledgments

The scope of this book is broad, covering many years, cities and towns, locations, and people. While bearing responsibility for the material presented herein, I am honestly indebted to a large number of dedicated people and institutions who have generously cooperated in order to make possible this historical study. The over thirty years that I have spent on this project always involved my home institution, the L. Tom Perry Special Collections at Brigham Young University’s Harold B. Lee Library where, for forty-one years, I was the Curator of the Arts & Communications Archive and the BYU Motion Picture Archive. It was there that E. Dennis Rowley, Curator of Archives & Manuscripts, was a steady supporter of this endeavor beginning in the mid-1970s. He was a mentor without a peer. I am also indebted to the following institutions and individuals:

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Center for Motion Picture Study: Linda Mehr.

Bison Archives: Mark Wanamaker

Cedar Breaks National Monument: Nina Fitzgerald, Teri Saa.

Brigham Young University, Harold B. Lee Library: Randy Olsen, University Librarian. Scott Duvall, Russell Taylor, and P. Bradford Westwood of the L. Tom Perry Special Collections.

Kanab Heritage Museum: Deanna Glover.

Southern Utah University, Gerald Sherratt Library: Janet B. Seegmiller.

Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation: Schawn Belston, Rob Easterla, and Jeffrey Thompson.

Cast and crew prepare to shoot a scene for Taza, Son of Cochise, with Dead Horse Point as the stunning backdrop. (Credit: Marc Wanamaker/Bison Archives, BYU Special Collections)

University of Southern California, Cinematic Arts Library: Ned Comstock.

University of California at Los Angeles, Arts Special Collections: Lauren Buisson.

Utah Film Commission: Directors Leigh von der Esch and Virginia Pearce. Melissa Jackson, Derek Mellus, Marshall Moore, Syd Smoot, Trevor Snarr, and Tammy Villa-Humphreys.

Utah State Archives: Tony Castro, Doug Misner, Greg Walz.

Zion National Park Archives/Human History Museum: Leslie Courtright, Jock F. Whitworth.

Jack Adams, Marvin Adams, Terry Alderman, Karen Alvey, Ralph Beckett, Rudy Behlmer, Stacey Endres Behlmer, Gordon Bench, Robert S. Birchard, Scott Boyter, Kevin Brownlow, Steve Browning, Barbara Burck Cathey, Lex Chamberlain, Anthony Chatterly, Courtney & Cathy Cobb, Linda Adams Crosby, J.L. Crawford, Jean Adams Crosby, Lisa Davis, Lyman Dayton, Vilo DeMille, Andre de Toth, Mary Gay Evans, Morris Everett, Jr. (The Everett Collection), Scott Eyman, Patrick Ford, Billie Frei, Ina Faye Frost, Colin Fryer, Carlo Gaberscek, Kay Giles, John N. Gillespie, Jack Goodspeed, Peter Graves, Harvard Heath, Monte Hellman, Charlton Heston, Chris Hicks, Don Holyoak, Norm Jackson, Marjorie Johannes, Calvin Johnson, Eric Johnson, Sylvan Johnson, Dennis Judd, Hawk Koch, Howard W. Koch, Dan & Darlene Longacre, Andrew V. McLaglen, Scott MacQueen, John W. Morgan, Merle Morris, Betty Motter, Dale Parry, Grayce Beckett Pike, Calvin L. Rampton, Bonnie Riding, Jackie Rife, Flora & Rupert Ruesch, George Schenck, Packy Smith, Bette Larsen Stanton, Phyllis Stewart, Sam Taylor, Karl Tangren. Louise Parry Thomas, Sterling Van Wagenen, Clint Walker, Tom Weaver, George White, Stuart Whitman, Jeanne Wickan, and Paul Wurtzel.

Donna Poulton, my former graduate student who went on to be a successful published author and art curator, was the angel who informed the late Gibbs Smith of my ongoing project to document moviemaking in Utah. He subsequently tracked me down and was persistent in getting me to sign a contract for this book, sight unseen. There was minted only one Gibbs Smith, an innovative, passionate publisher. Suzanne Taylor, publisher and CCO of the company, suggested this updated edition.

Finally, I am grateful for the sacrifices made from the very beginning of this project by my late wife, Patricia, who thankfully made certain that our children, Sam, Jon, Melanie, Jennifer, and Laura, were not too seriously damaged by her husband’s obsession with the Utah movie saga for so many, many years. At last, they—and their children—can read for themselves what all the fuss was about.

John Ford discusses a scene in Monument Valley with Henry Fonda during the production of Fort Apache. (Credit: Howard Pearson Papers/BYU Special Collections)

Introduction

A spacecraft descends on a landscape dotted with strange orange shapes. They have the appearance of the fragile drizzles of piled wet sand that one creates on the beach, their existence as fleeting as the next wave that comes in to obliterate them. On landing, the leader of the American crew breaks the seal and opens the door. Cautiously, he pokes out his head, confirms that there is oxygen in this new environment, and quickly asks of the new habitat, Is this an alien planet?

This is not an account of a NASA journey into space, nor is it Jules Verne updated; rather, it is a scene from the 1999 Universal film Galaxy Quest, a parody of the phenomenally popular 1960s television series Star Trek and its dedicated followers, starring Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, and Alan Rickman. The answer to Allen’s query, as he peers out onto the landscape of Goblin Valley State Park in Utah’s Emery County, is yes, it is an alien planet—and no, it isn’t much like any other of America’s fifty states. Since the early twentieth century, Utah has been the setting for more than a thousand feature motion pictures, television movies, television series episodes, as well as hundreds of documentaries and television commercials. The varied landscapes of alpine tree-covered splendor, desert canyons, prairie, and watershed has represented Egypt, Germany, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Mexico, Scotland, Timbuktu, and Beijing, as well as the states of Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Nevada, Wyoming, New York, Missouri, Arizona, Colorado, South Dakota, California, Iowa, Nebraska, North Carolina, Illinois, and Texas.

This digest of disguises used for nearly a century by Hollywood (and indigenous) moviemakers might suggest that Utah has an identity crisis. However, to promoters and residents of the state, its versatility, attested to by hundreds of productions successfully filmed in Utah, has forged an identity uniquely its own. There have even been a number of television movies filmed in Utah on locations where these Utah stories actually occurred that garnered nationwide attention. These movies include Child Bride at Short Creek (1981), which looked back at the 1953 raid of a polygamous community on the Utah-Arizona border, and gave early starring roles to later top-tier actresses Diane Lane and Helen Hunt; The Executioner’s Song (1982), starring Tommy Lee Jones as murderer Gary Gilmore—with the screenplay by Norman Mailer from his best-selling book—who was the first man to be executed in the US following the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976; The Deliberate Stranger (1986), with Mark Harmon starring as the notorious serial killer Ted Bundy; In the Line of Duty: The Siege at Marion (1992), about separatist bombers Adam and Jonathan Swapp; and, Deliver Them From Evil: The Taking of Alta View (1992), which dramatized a hostage situation at a Salt Lake Valley hospital, starring Harry Hamblin and Teri Garr.

Tim Allen has a run-in with a space creature in Goblin Valley in Universal’s Galaxy Quest. (Credit: BYU Special Collections)

The coming of Hollywood to Utah, beginning in the 1920s, documents what I consider to be the fourth invasion by outside forces into a state that was founded in 1847 by religious pioneers as a place of isolation and refuge from the very outside influences that eventually caught up to them in their intermountain settlements. Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—under their founding prophet, Joseph Smith—began their organization in upstate New York in 1830. Church membership swelled with new converts in the American Northeast as well as thousands of new adherents from England and other countries. Their practice of gathering in Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois resulted in a degree of prosperity and voting power on the American frontier that quickly made them aliens in their own country, even as they pointed to protections under the Constitution of the United States for their existence. Driven first from the western frontier of Missouri, where the governor issued an order for their extermination, and finally from their Mississippi River town of Nauvoo, Illinois, in the winter of 1846 following the murder of Joseph Smith by a mob, nearly twenty thousand Latter-day Saints began the largest migration in US history. The first wave of this migration ended on July 24, 1847, more than 1,300 miles to the west in the valley of the Great Salt Lake. The area known as the Great Basin, then a tenuously held Mexican possession, took a historic turn when their prophet Brigham Young uttered the now-famous words, This is the right place. Their object was to settle in a land that no one else wanted so that they could practice their religion in peace.

For Young and his people, the goals of isolation, home industry, and spiritual regeneration were well underway when three important invasions into their Rocky Mountain home took place. The first occurred not long after their arrival when, beginning in 1849, a stream of travelers passed through Salt Lake City on their way to the California gold fields, trading with the Mormons for much-needed supplies. The second invasion, more predatory in nature, was in the form of the United States Army, sent by President James Buchanan in 1857 to quell what had been rumored by a hostile press and disgruntled federal officials as rebellion by Utahns against the US government. The army came, saw no rebellion, and established an army post just east of Salt Lake City. A third, less-intimidating incursion from the outside world happened a decade later, in 1869, when the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads were joined by a golden spike at Promontory Point on the north end of the Great Salt Lake, ushering in a new era of transcontinental transportation, commerce, and exposure to outside influences. Statehood for what was nicknamed the Beehive State (representing enterprise and industry) eventually came in 1896, six years after Church leaders issued a public pronouncement to abandon the controversial practice of plural marriage. Utah began its entry into the American mainstream. Ironically, while each of these incursions created some problems, they also provided much-needed hard currency to the struggling settlement through commerce with outsiders. The fourth invasion, occurring much later in Utah’s history, would be no different.

The story of Hollywood moviemaking in Utah began in the early 1900s, but more earnestly in the mid-1920s, thanks to the three enterprising Parry brothers in Cedar City. Politics, social culture, economics, mining, the cattle industry, and tourism are commonly understood to comprise legitimate forms of history for a city, county, or state. However, the history of movie production has for decades been treated as ephemeral, as if impervious to any influence on the inhabitants of a region. This history seeks to address that void in Utah’s story. When Hollywood Came to Utah is not only the story of places—movie locations within Utah—but of people who worked with Hollywood executives and crews, who plowed new roads in order to get to pristine sites often not seen even by local residents, and who labored as wranglers or as extras on location. Whether residents of Kanab and Moab—each community well under two thousand residents during the time described in this book—or of the more urban Salt Lake City, these were the people who were conversely affected socially and economically by the arrival of movie stars, trucks full of equipment, and what amounted over time to millions of dollars infused into their local economies. The movies made in Utah helped to write various chapters of Hollywood movie history as well, from potboilers on lean budgets to some of the most memorable films ever made.

Why is a history of this kind important? Like Mt. Everest, it is there, but unlike Everest, it has not been explored until now. Among the histories of tourism, mining, industrial manufacturing, military bases, ranching, Indian wars, education, exploration, and peoples and their movements, the chronicle of moviemaking in Utah is conspicuously absent, quite a surprise for an industry that in 2018 brought more than $67 million to the Utah economy from production of films under the state’s incentive program. This figure does not include the influx of money into the economy generated by the production of the many commercials and smaller film projects. In addition, there are historical reasons for the preservation and study of commercial Hollywood motion pictures made in Utah. While movies and television programs are usually made for entertainment purposes, they also serve an environmental purpose. The land surrounding many of the filming sites for The Greatest Story Ever Told—shot near a quickly rising Lake Powell in 1963—is no longer visible. Footage from the Flicka series of features made by Twentieth Century Fox reveals watershed and ground cover that has changed significantly since the 1940s when they were filmed. These films also show, in dazzling Technicolor, the expanse of pastureland and watershed areas that made up the Duck Creek area on Cedar Mountain in southwestern Utah before the appearance of the dozens of vacation homes that now crowd the landscape. Footage from these films and many others is, in most instances, the only motion-picture evidence that exists of the topography, landfall, and water drainage in many rural Utah areas from as early as the 1920s.

I have chosen to tell the story of Hollywood moviemaking in Utah chronologically and by region, focusing on the origins and heyday of filmmaking, generally from the 1920s through the 1960s. (But for a few exceptions that are noted in relevant chapters, I have not dealt with movies made by Utah film companies.) During these years, the Hollywood studios, major and minor, developed close relationships with the various regions of Utah and their people. It was during these years that the tradition that is still active in the first decade of the twenty-first century began. Work on this history has occupied more than thirty years of combing newspapers, interviewing locals as well as filmmakers, scouring studio archival records, viewing many of the films themselves, and visiting the sites where these movies were filmed. On occasion, layers of local oral and printed mythology about moviemaking had to be peeled back to get at the often-surprising truth about where a film was actually made.

Obviously, not every important Utah-based film can be treated extensively within the limits of one volume. A survey history of this type represented in this book is, by its very nature, selective. Films have been chosen for extended treatment due to their overall importance as well as the information available to accurately tell the story of their making. I have also selected films that reveal a representative process of the interaction between studio crews and townspeople. The film activity generated by Utah and its people is most impressive, even in the years of economic fluctuation, growing restrictions on the use of public lands from the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service, and growing competition from other states and countries, that have seen the economic benefits of attracting filmmaking to their locales.

A Moab rancher who had worked on a number of movies succinctly stated the benefits of moviemaking in Utah: They don’t take anything but pictures and don’t leave anything except money. The movie industry has also left a legacy, one that constitutes the dramatic, comedic, and sometimes harrowing story that unfolds in the following pages.

—James V. D’Arc

Orem, Utah

Scene 1

Iron County

1924–1958

(Credit: BYU Special Collections)

Cedar City and the Parry Brothers

The story of Hollywood moviemaking in Utah is inseparable from that of the Parry brothers—Gronway, Chauncey, and Caleb Whitney—and their business ventures in Cedar City and nearby Zion National Park. The brothers did not have stars in their eyes, but they were looking to make their mark in the world. They ended up ushering in a new industry to their native state and establishing a corporate template for how Hollywood moviemaking companies might thrive away from home, even in the Depression economy. Without Gronway, Chauncey, and Whitney Parry, the Hollywood movie studio crews might never have come to Utah, or at least not as early—nor as often—as they did at such an important time in Utah’s history.

This photo of Zion Park tour guide and wrangler Walt Beattie at Angels Landing could easily have been that of Chauncey Parry scouting locations for Hollywood movie companies. (Credit: Louise Parry Thomas)

Cedar City was founded in 1851 when Brigham Young sent Welsh, Scottish, and English Mormon immigrants there to mine iron. Situated on the main travel route from Salt Lake City to Las Vegas and then to San Bernardino, Los Angeles, and port cities in California, the city grew rapidly, becoming one of the largest cities in Utah outside of Salt Lake City. Cedar City is surrounded by natural wonders not fully recognized at the time of its founding. Cedar Breaks National Monument covers more than six thousand acres high on the Markagunt Plateau and is distinguished by lush forests and sudden outcroppings of colorful weathered rock, an area aptly named by Indians the circle of painted cliffs. Northeast of Cedar City, just off Interstate 15, lies the small agricultural community of Parowan, the seat of Iron County, and another access point to Cedar Breaks National Monument as well as Brian Head peak, the highest mountain in southwestern Utah. From the lofty elevation of Cedar Breaks, some four thousand feet above Cedar City and Parowan, there are stunning views of nearby Zion and Bryce canyons and the picturesque system of plateaus and red rock canyons of the Kolob region of Zion National Park.

It was the eldest brother, Gronway Jr., who led his brother Chauncey, and later Whit, from Salt Lake to Cedar City. After graduating from high school, Gronway entered the University of Utah in 1908 and worked on a road survey crew in southwestern Utah during the summer of 1913. In 1914, he transferred from the University of Utah to the Utah State Agricultural College (now Utah State University) in Logan to get a degree in animal husbandry, as well as veterinary training. It was said that he loved horses more than people; if this were true, it was because he knew more about them.¹ In the summer of 1915, he became the Iron County agricultural agent in Cedar City and taught animal husbandry at the Branch Agricultural College (now Southern Utah University). He also opened the first steam laundry in Cedar City and sold cars through an automobile dealership. Clearly, Gronway may have been rambunctious but not idle in making his way in the world.

Dapper Chauncey Parry, the pioneer of Hollywood moviemaking in Utah. (Credit: Louise Parry Thomas)

Chauncey, meanwhile, was attending the University of Utah, but was persuaded by his brother to come down and help manage Gronway’s other growing commercial enterprises, the Cedars Hotel and a transportation company that shuttled passengers from the Los Angeles & Salt Lake Railroad (soon to be bought out by Union Pacific) at Lund, Utah, to St. George. With whatever time they had left over, the brothers explored the mountains, canyons, and plains of their surroundings, including what was then known as Little Zion canyon, not yet a national monument or park.

Shortly thereafter, some government surveyors stayed at the Cedars Hotel. They were there to build a road into Zion Canyon, or Mukuntuweap National Monument, as it was then known. Only a wagon road used by a few farmers to access the area existed at the time. The possibility of roads into this scenic area gave the restless Chauncey an idea: If the surveyors saw interest in access to the canyons, why not others as well? This led the brothers to apply to the Department of the Interior in 1917 for the transportation concession in Zion. William O. Tufts, the engineer who led the earlier road surveying party, endorsed the Parrys as active business men who were well known and well liked throughout the whole territory. He concluded, They give their whole time and personal supervision to their business.²

Gronway Parry beside one of the touring cars with which he and brothers Chauncey and Whit pioneered tourist transportation in Cedar Breaks National Monument and Zion, Grand Canyon, and Bryce Canyon national parks. (Credit: Louise Parry Thomas)

The brothers next presented a joint proposal with William W. Wylie, owner of the popular Wylie Camps of large tent cottages in Yellowstone National Park, to be the concessioners for lodging as well as transportation at Zion. Tufts once again came to their support. In a letter to Horace Albright, Acting Director of the Department of the Interior, he wrote, They are enthusiastic about the development of southwestern Utah and are popular with the residents of that region. I should say that possibly their greatest failing might be in a tendency to be over enthusiastic and optimistic and trying to swing more than they could carry. What to Tufts was a failing turned out to be prophetic about the brothers’ innate hubris: seldom did they reach out for something they did not eventually achieve. Citing the brothers’ many business enterprises, their hotel full of guests all the time, and their brisk sales of automobiles, Tufts expressed confidence in their ability to handle the concession successfully.³ The National Park Transportation and Camping Company was incorporated in April 1917. The brothers liquidated their other interests and invested $4,900 in the partnership with Wylie, holding 49 percent of the stock. Wylie served as president, Gronway as vice president, and Chauncey as treasurer. Wylie’s brother, Clinton, was secretary.⁴

The new company began with a secondhand seven-passenger Hudson sedan, a Model-T Ford, and three used Cadillacs. These were big sedans, remembered Dale Parry, Gronway’s son, who later drove for the company. They could probably get four or five paying passengers in each one and they started out with just a handful. They were so poor in those days they would have to get their people there, get the money ahead of time and go get gasoline. They were just a couple of guys starting up a business.⁵ Since gas stations were few and far between in those days, gas was carried in metal cans strapped to the vehicles.

Younger brother Whit was brought in to help the fledgling business as a driver. Gronway remembered that the youthfulness of the teenager occasionally surprised Whit’s passengers: We couldn’t always afford drivers either, as one of us had to stay and make contacts while the other would drive a car. We didn’t hire anyone regularly at first, so we decided to let our younger brother, Whitney, help us out. Because he was so small, we’d have him sit up on pillows to appear larger—it was before the days of drivers’ licenses. Often when Whit would get between Cedar City and his destination, he’d have a flat tire, and would get out to fix it. To the amazement of the passengers, he was but a mere boy, so they’d become worried about their safety. We instructed Whit to tell them it was no further to go on than it was to go back, so they would decide to go on. By the end of the trip they’d always vote Whit one of the best drivers they’d ever traveled with.⁶

World War I interrupted the Parrys’ growing transportation business as patronage in the parks ebbed. The older brothers enlisted in the Army Air Service in June 1917, but for some reason they did not leave for duty until after the September 1917 visit of Interior Secretary Horace Albright to tour Zion for the first time. Chauncey received flight training at Berkeley Field in California in January 1918, but Gronway was mustered out after a tainted vaccine affected his eyes. He spent the duration of the war managing ranches in Mexico and Nevada. The war over, Chauncey returned to Salt Lake City in early 1920, where he taught high school before the spring tourist season began in the park.

Prior to their departure for military service, both brothers had given their proxies to Wylie. On their return, they discovered that they had been put out of the company. A court battle followed and Chauncey applied for his own franchise in 1921, with the judge ordering the two parties to set arrangements straight.⁷ The company was renamed Utah–Grand Canyon Transportation Company, expanding the scope of service to include the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. Soon, however, Wylie, in debt to the railroad, got out of the company and hired out for wages for the summer to run the Wylie Camp lodging operation within the park. Chauncey invited Gronway, still in Nevada, to join the growing transportation company as the number of tourists increased.

As if running several businesses in the region were not enough activity, Chauncey reveled in traveling—in the saddle or in the cockpit—throughout southwestern Utah and northern Arizona, armed with a camera. He maintained his active interest in flying and is reputed to be the first to fly an airplane into the Grand Canyon. Camera in hand, he was always interested in showing off the scenic splendor of Zion Canyon, Bryce Canyon, the Kolob Canyons, Cedar Mountain, and the area down to the Grand Canyon. When President Warren G. Harding made his western tour in the spring of 1923, he included a visit to Cedar City and to Zion National Park. Chauncey, who wrangled the horses and acted as guide to Zion Canyon, can be seen among the distinguished visitors who, in addition to President Harding, included Utah senator Reed Smoot, Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, Vice President Calvin Coolidge, and LDS church president Heber J. Grant, as well a member of Harding’s secret service detail and his chief of staff.

Recognized by the state for his knowledge of southern Utah’s seldom-seen regions, in April 1926 Chauncey was chosen by Utah governor George H. Dern to be part of a select group of five travelers that undertook a week-long journey down the Colorado River, from the confluence with the Dirty Devil to Lee’s Ferry, a distance of about 170 miles. The group consisted of Governor Dern, his secretary, Oliver Grimes, geologist Glen Ruby of Colorado, Utah guide David Rust, and Chauncey.⁸ Scheduled congressional hearings in Washington on the utilization of the Colorado River motivated the trip. Dern was studying the problem of dam building and bridge construction along the river. Two years later, Chauncey