Paria or Pahreah (, rhymes with "Maria"), is a
ghost town
A ghost town, deserted city, extinct town, or abandoned city is an abandoned settlement, usually one that contains substantial visible remaining buildings and infrastructure such as roads. A town often becomes a ghost town because the economi ...
on the
Paria River
The Paria River is a tributary of the Colorado River, approximately long, in southern Utah and northern Arizona in the United States. It drains a rugged and arid region northwest of the Colorado, flowing through roadless slot canyons along par ...
in
Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument
The Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument (GSENM) is a United States national monument protecting the Grand Staircase, the Kaiparowits Plateau, and the Canyons of the Escalante (Escalante River) in southern Utah. It was established in 19 ...
in central
Kane County,
Utah
Utah is a landlocked state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is one of the Four Corners states, sharing a border with Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. It also borders Wyoming to the northea ...
, United States. It was inhabited from 1870 to 1929, and later used as a
filming location
A filming location is a place where some or all of a film or television series is produced, instead of or in addition to using sets constructed on a movie studio backlot or soundstage. In filmmaking, a location is any place where a film crew wi ...
.
History
The area was first settled in 1865 by a
Mormon
Mormons are a religious and cultural group related to Mormonism, the principal branch of the Latter Day Saint movement started by Joseph Smith in upstate New York during the 1820s. After Smith's death in 1844, the movement split into several ...
group led by Peter Shirts.
[ This early settlement was named ''Rockhouse'', for Shirts's strongly built ]sandstone
Sandstone is a Clastic rock#Sedimentary clastic rocks, clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of grain size, sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate mineral, silicate grains, Cementation (geology), cemented together by another mineral. Sand ...
house. After the end of the Black Hawk War
The Black Hawk War was a conflict between the United States and Native Americans in the United States, Native Americans led by Black Hawk (Sauk leader), Black Hawk, a Sauk people, Sauk leader. The war erupted after Black Hawk and a group of ...
in 1867 settlers began to arrive at a rapid pace. Farming produced good crops for several years, but irrigation
Irrigation (also referred to as watering of plants) is the practice of applying controlled amounts of water to land to help grow crops, landscape plants, and lawns. Irrigation has been a key aspect of agriculture for over 5,000 years and has bee ...
was very difficult; each spring the surface runoff
Surface runoff (also known as overland flow or terrestrial runoff) is the unconfined flow of water over the ground surface, in contrast to ''channel runoff'' (or ''stream flow''). It occurs when excess rainwater, stormwater, meltwater, or other ...
water was absorbed into the desert soil too quickly to properly water the fields. In 1870 the residents agreed to move the settlement. They divided in two groups; half the people went about upstream and founded the town of Pahreah.[
In 1871, John D. Lee came to the Paria area, fleeing investigators of the ]Mountain Meadows massacre
A mountain is an elevated portion of the Earth's crust, generally with steep sides that show significant exposed bedrock. Although definitions vary, a mountain may differ from a plateau in having a limited summit area, and is usually higher t ...
. He constructed a dam
A dam is a barrier that stops or restricts the flow of surface water or underground streams. Reservoirs created by dams not only suppress floods but also provide water for activities such as irrigation, human consumption, industrial use, aqua ...
and irrigation ditches with the help of many locals and passersby, including members of John Wesley Powell
John Wesley Powell (March 24, 1834 – September 23, 1902) was an American geologist, U.S. Army soldier, explorer of the American West, professor at Illinois Wesleyan University, and director of major scientific and cultural institutions. He ...
's second Colorado River
The Colorado River () is one of the principal rivers (along with the Rio Grande) in the Southwestern United States and in northern Mexico. The river, the List of longest rivers of the United States (by main stem), 5th longest in the United St ...
expedition.[
Paria grew through the 1870s, gaining a ]general store
A general merchant store (also known as general merchandise store, general dealer, village shop, or country store) is a rural or small-town store that carries a general line of merchandise. It carries a broad selection of merchandise, someti ...
, church, and a number of sandstone houses as the population grew. However, the town was hit hard in the 1880s. The Paria River flooded every year from 1883 to 1888, washing away fields and even some buildings. People started to move away. By 1892 there were only eight families left, but for some reason the town was granted a post office
A post office is a public facility and a retailer that provides mail services, such as accepting letter (message), letters and parcel (package), parcels, providing post office boxes, and selling postage stamps, packaging, and stationery. Post o ...
that year, under the name Paria. Not much changed until a small gold mining
Gold mining is the extraction of gold by mining.
Historically, mining gold from Alluvium, alluvial deposits used manual separation processes, such as gold panning. The expansion of gold mining to ores that are not on the surface has led to mor ...
operation was established here in 1911. Within a year, that too was wiped out by flooding.[ The post office closed in 1914.][ A lone bachelor ]prospector
Prospector may refer to:
Space exploration
* Prospector (spacecraft), a planned lunar probe, canceled in 1962
* ''Lunar Prospector'', a NASA spacecraft
Trains
* Prospector (train), a passenger train operated by the Denver & Rio Grande Western ra ...
held out until 1929, then Paria was empty.[
]
Filming location
In later years the film industry became interested in using the picturesque ghost town, with its canyon vista background, as a location for making Westerns
The Western is a genre of fiction typically set in the American frontier (commonly referred to as the "Old West" or the "Wild West") between the California Gold Rush of 1849 and the closing of the frontier in 1890, and commonly associated wit ...
. Several scenes for ''Buffalo Bill'' were shot here in 1943, but crews were in a constant struggle against the flooding Paria River. Producers of other movies and television programs used Paria more or less throughout the 1950s.[ Then in 1961 the old ghost town was used as a major location for the ]Rat Pack
The Rat Pack was an informal group of singers that, in its second iteration, ultimately made films and appeared together in Las Vegas casino venues. They originated in the late 1940s and early 1950s as a group of A-list show business friends, s ...
film ''Sergeants 3
''Sergeants 3'' is a 1962 American comedy/ Western film directed by John Sturges and starring Rat Pack icons Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford and Joey Bishop. It was the last film to feature all five members o ...
'', the largest western ever filmed in Kane County.[ Not satisfied with what remained of Paria, the film's creators constructed an imitation ]Old West
The American frontier, also known as the Old West, and popularly known as the Wild West, encompasses the geography, history, folklore, and culture associated with the forward wave of American expansion in mainland North America that bega ...
town about a mile to the west. Visitors often confused this movie set with the real Paria,[ as it fell into disuse after the filming of '']The Outlaw Josey Wales
''The Outlaw Josey Wales'' is a 1976 American revisionist Western film set during and after the American Civil War. It was directed by and starred Clint Eastwood (as Josey Wales), with Chief Dan George, Sondra Locke, Bill McKinney, and Joh ...
'' in 1975.
After more flash flooding severely damaged the set in 1998, a team of volunteers and employees of the Bureau of Land Management
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is an agency within the United States Department of the Interior responsible for administering federal lands, U.S. federal lands. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the BLM oversees more than of land, or one ...
disassembled the wreckage and replaced the structures in 1999–2001. New interpretive signs explained the movie set's significance and distinguished it from Paria itself.[ Then in 2006 the rebuilt set was destroyed by a suspicious fire.][
In 2007, Paria was used as a filming location by the independent film '' The Attic Door''. A facade of a house was built in the footprint of the previous set, then moved to the nearby town of ]Kanab
Kanab ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Kane County, Utah, United States.[Find a County]
". ' ...
.
File:Pahreah (Paria) Town Site, Utah1.jpg, A historical marker at the former site of Pariah, Utah.
File:Paria, Utah ghost town 01.jpg, Rugged and rocky landscape near Pariah, Utah.
File:Paria, Utah ghost town 02.jpg, Paria, Utah, landscape, ghost town and filming location.
File:Paria, Utah ghost town cemetery.jpg, Inside the Pariah, Utah ghost town cemetery.
See also
* List of ghost towns in Utah
This is an incomplete list of ghost towns in Utah, a state of the United States.
Classification
Barren site
* Sites no longer in existence
* Sites that have been destroyed
* Covered with water
* Reverted to pasture
* May have a few dif ...
References
External links
Pahreah or Pariah
at GhostTowns.com
{{Kane County, Utah
Ghost towns in Utah
Populated places established in 1865
Ghost towns in Kane County, Utah