Paria (also spelled Pahreah), a ghost town in central Kane County, Utah, sits on the Paria River within Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument. It was occupied primarily from about 1870 to 1929 and later became a notable Western film location. The name derives from Southern Paiute or Ute terms associated with the river, often rendered as meaning “muddy water” or similar.
Early Settlement and Founding
The broader area was first settled by Euro-American pioneers in 1865. A Mormon group led by Peter Shirts (sometimes spelled Shurtz) established a small community known as Rockhouse, named for Shirts’s substantial sandstone dwelling. Settlement accelerated after the end of the Black Hawk War around 1867. Early farming yielded decent crops for a time, but irrigation proved extremely difficult—spring runoff soaked into the desert soil too quickly to sustain fields effectively. Native American raids and water challenges also pressured the community.
In 1870, residents decided to relocate. They split into groups; roughly half moved about five miles upstream and founded the town of Pahreah (later standardized as Paria). Under local Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints leadership (including figures such as William Meeks in some accounts), the new site developed with homes, a church, a school, and eventually a general store. By the 1870s the population reached about 47 families (roughly 100–130 people in some reports), including a number of Paiute residents. Residents raised livestock and farmed, with vegetable gardens, orchards, and cattle.
In 1871, John D. Lee (fleeing scrutiny related to the Mountain Meadows Massacre) arrived in the Paria area. He helped construct a dam and irrigation ditches, assisted by local settlers and even members of John Wesley Powell’s second Colorado River expedition. These efforts temporarily improved water management.
Peak and Decline
The town grew through the 1870s with sandstone and log houses. Hard times began in the 1880s. The Paria River flooded repeatedly from 1883 through 1888 (and in other years), washing away fields, irrigation works, and some buildings. Flooding deposited alkaline/salty soils, entrenched arroyos, and made sustained agriculture increasingly difficult. Drought compounded the problems. Population declined sharply; by 1892 only about eight families remained.
Despite the decline, a post office opened in 1892 (some sources say 1893) under the name Paria. A small gold-mining effort began around 1911–1912 but was destroyed by flooding within about a year. The post office closed in 1914 (or 1915 in some accounts). A lone prospector reportedly stayed until 1929, after which the site was abandoned. By the 1930s it was a true ghost town, with photographs from that era documenting the empty village. A small pioneer cemetery with roughly 20 graves (many with faded or illegible markers) remains nearby.
Hollywood Era
Beginning in the 1940s, the scenic canyon setting and remaining structures attracted film crews. Scenes for the 1944 biopic Buffalo Bill were shot there (crews battled flooding). The location continued in use for Westerns and television through the 1950s. In 1961–1962, the Rat Pack film Sergeants 3 (the largest Western filmed in Kane County at the time) used the area; producers built an imitation Old West town about a mile west of the original site because so little of the real town remained. This movie set was later used for other productions, including scenes from The Outlaw Josey Wales (1975–1976, starring Clint Eastwood). Episodes of shows such as Gunsmoke were also associated with the broader area.
Flash floods severely damaged the set in 1998. Volunteers and Bureau of Land Management personnel dismantled the wreckage and reconstructed structures (with interpretive signs distinguishing the movie set from the original townsite) around 1999–2001. In 2006 a suspicious fire destroyed the rebuilt set. A temporary facade was built in 2007 for the independent film The Attic Door and later moved. Little of either the original town or the movie sets survives today—mainly stone foundations, fence remnants, and the cemetery.
Present Day
The original townsite lies across the river from the main access area and has been heavily eroded by the Paria River. Access is via a roughly 5-mile dirt road turning north from U.S. Highway 89 near milepost 31 (about 33–35 miles east of Kanab). The road can be rough, steep, and washboarded; high-clearance vehicles are preferable, and it can become impassable when wet. The colorful banded cliffs (Chinle Formation and related strata) and surrounding landscape remain striking. The site is a day-use area within the national monument; there are no services, and visitors should respect remaining historic features, avoid the riverbed when flash-flood risk exists, and follow Leave No Trace principles.
Paria’s history reflects the broader challenges of Mormon pioneer settlement on the Colorado Plateau—tenuous irrigation, isolation, flooding, and soil problems—followed by a second life as a cinematic backdrop that helped define Kane County’s “Little Hollywood” reputation. Today it offers a quiet, visually dramatic reminder of both frontier struggle and Western mythmaking.