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Paria Canyon

Paria (Kane County) is forty-two miles northeast of Kanab at the junction of Cottonwood Creek and the Paria River from which it receives its name. In 1865, Peter Shirts (Shurtz) became the first white man to settle there. In 1870, William Meeks and a party of Mormon missionaries arrived for the purpose of proselytizing and educating the Indians. Today it is a ghost town slowly being washed away by the Paria River. Pahreah was the early phonetic spelling of what the whites thought the Indians were saying. Major Powell was the first to spell it Paria and this is how the postal service recorded it. The post office closed in 1914 because the settlers were becoming tired of fighting floods and drought and were moving to other areas. The last moment of glory for Paria was being a western location for moving pictures. Many great movies were filmed there before the town was totally abandoned. (John W. Van Cott)