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Selling the Scenery: Chauncey and Gronway Parry and the Birth of Southern Utah’s Tourism and Movie Industries
Selling the Scenery: Chauncey and Gronway Parry and the Birth of Southern Utah’s Tourism and Movie Industries
By JANET B. SEEGMILLER
This story begins at the turn of the twentieth century with two Parry brothers growing up on 700 East near 2100 South in Salt Lake City. The elder, Gronway, was born in 1889 and named for his father, Gronway Parry Sr., the son of Welsh pioneer immigrants. The younger brother was named Chauncey, but called “Chance” by family and friends. He was born in 1896. Their father was a builder and brick mason. Their mother, Laura, was the daughter of Washington County pioneers, Robert and Mary Ann Gardner of Pine Valley. So the Parry boys had a foot in Utah’s pioneer heritage, but lives that faced the age of automobiles and airplanes.
During the next thirty years, as these boys became men, they would change the economy and ultimately the history of rural, southern Utah. They initiated the “Golden Circle” auto and bus tours of Utah’s almost unknown national parks in 1917, and later promoted southern Utah’s scenic vistas to Hollywood movie makers, who were beginning in the 1920s to move from movie sets to filming outdoors. Movie companies brought millions of dollars into southern Utah communities over the next five decades. As with most success stories, the Parry brothers’ contribution to Utah history is characterized by some luck, some dreaming, some genius, and plenty of hard work.
Gronway described himself as a young man who loved horses more than people because he knew more about horses. When as a boy he rode his pinto horse into the fields of South Salt Lake, he ended up being bucked off. The pinto returned home without him which caused no small amount of consternation [his word] in the neighborhood.
Gronway also tended to be mischievous. He was once expelled from school for throwing his voice and making pigeon sounds, “kit-a-cut-coo.” His punishment, however, was like sending Brer Rabbit to the briar patch, for his parents sent him to Pine Valley in southern Utah to be straightened out by his pioneer grandparents. It was here that Gronway fell in love with the southern mountains.1
Both brothers were ambitious and persistent. Chance discovered that he was too small for team sports that were just coming into vogue at the city schools, so he “exacted his measure of respect by thrashing the larger boys in fights.” Like his older brother, he loved horses and began working at age ten, delivering newspapers from the back of a pony. Breaking and training horses was in their nature. It would play a momentous role in their future as well.
Both young men excelled at academics. Each graduated from high school and went to the University of Utah, Gronway in 1908 and Chauncey in 1914. Gronway paid his own way by buying and selling old race horses, but confessed that his penury still required him to walk three miles to and from school because he could not afford the three cent bus fare. At the university, the brothers may have been strongly influenced by classes from Utah geologist Frederick Pack, who took his students to study the geology of southern Utah. Gronway found work during the summer of 1913 on a road survey crew in southern Utah, which gave him additional opportunity to view scenic areas in Kane, Garfield and Iron counties.
In 1914, Gronway transferred to the Utah State Agricultural College (USAC) in Logan, to earn his degree in animal husbandry and obtain veterinary training. The USAC had recently assumed administration of the Branch Normal School in Cedar City, which added agricultural courses to its offerings and became known as the Branch Agricultural College (BAC). After graduation from USAC, Gronway accepted the position of Iron County agricultural agent that included teaching animal husbandry at the BAC. This brought the twenty-seven-year-old Gronway Parry to Cedar City in July 1915. Timing was the important factor to all he and Chauncey would do thereafter.
From the time of John Wesley Powell’s expeditions beginning in 1869, explorers, photographers, and scientists had described the majestic beauty and geologicwonders of southern Utah and northern Arizona as worth seeing. A few elite visitors came during the 1890s to hunt and explore led by John W.Young, Edwin D. (Dee) Woolley, and Daniel Seegmiller who had visions of the region becoming a national vacation land.2 Later, Randall Jones and Dr. George Middleton of Cedar City took up the cause. During the national conservation program inaugurated by President Theodore Roosevelt and U. S. Forest official Gifford Pinchot, many areas were set aside—or actually withdrawn from entry—in order to preserve the land for “scenic, scientific or historic purposes” and prevent it from passing into private ownership. These areas were titled national monuments. The area known to locals as Zion Canyon was named a national monument in 1909, and given a Native American name, Mukuntuweap National Monument. Jones and Middleton campaigned to open the area to tourists which would require roads and hotels in the communities. Dr. Middleton brought Frederick Pack, government officials, and railroad executives from Salt Lake City to see the monument. He helped organize horse and pack animals for expeditions into the nearby mountains. Randall Jones, a young architect, began plans for a modern hotel to be built in Cedar City.3
Even with the demands of teaching and extension work, the ambitious Gronway still found time to pursue his interest in the variety of motorized vehicles which were just then being introduced and other related businesses. By the end of his first year in Cedar City, he had sold twenty-five cars through a Buick/National automobile dealership. He had also opened the first steam laundry business in Cedar City and become manager of the Cedars Hotel on Main Street. Gronway used his business interests to entice Chauncey away from the University of Utah to help him manage the hotel and to operate a motorized stage line to carry passengers to and from St. George to the railroad station at Lund.
In the fall of 1916, government road crew surveying a new road into Mukuntuweap National Monument stayed at the hotel. Gronway offered Chauncey’s services as a guide. He spent several months with them in what the locals still called “Little Zion.” The Parry brothers seeing the enthusiasm of the surveying party for the scenic attractions became convinced that countless additional visitors would come, if transportation and accommodations were available. They soon offered to contract with the Department of the Interior for both. Gronway summarizedtheir qualifications in a two and a half page letter sent January 18, 1917, which included this statement: We will state at the start that we have ample capital and financial backing to make the concession good. As to the ability and experience in serving the public, will say that handling the public is our business. We are in the hotel and transportation business at Cedar City, Utah. We own and operate a stage line of Buick and National cars from Lund to Cedar City and St. George. . . In conjunction with this passenger line we operate a truck-freight line between Lund and Cedar City. We have just completed a first class modern steam laundry at Cedar City, which will enable us to be of further service to the public.4
At about this time, the Los Angeles & Salt Lake railroad line contacted William W. Wylie, former operator of the Wylie Camps in Yellowstone National Park, and offered to advance him thirteen thousand dollars to establish a camp in Zion Canyon. Upon discovering that the Parry brothers were interested in providing services at the monument, the railroad officials arranged for Gronway to pick up Wylie at the Lund depot in February 1917. They met with railroad agents and Salt Lake businessmen interested in establishing transportation lines from the railroad station at Lund (thirty miles northwest of Cedar City) to tourist facilities in the canyon. The group drove to Virgin by auto, and then traveled the next day by wagon into Zion Canyon, still officially called Mukuntuweap National Monument. Back in Rockville, they met with dubious local citizens who heard the men predict that soon automobiles by the hundreds would pass through their town each day to visit the National Monument.
In the aftermath of the trip and meeting, Wylie and the Parry brothers agreed to cooperate by incorporating the National Park Transportation and Camping Company, with William Wylie as president, Gronway as vice-president, Chauncey as treasurer, and Clinton Wylie as Secretary. Gronway invested twenty-five hundred dollars and Chauncey twenty-four hundred dollars, giving the Parry brothers 49 percent of the stock. The brothers sold their other businesses in order to develop the transportation side of the franchise.
The Department of the Interior awarded the company a five-year lease on concessions and Wylie developed a suitable camp in a grove of trees south of the present Zion Lodge. The wood and canvas accommodations were primitive, but were undoubtedly more comfortable than the transportation. The Parrys had just two vehicles, a second-hand seven passenger Hudson and a Model T Ford. The roads were still terrible and the trip from Lund to Zion took all day. Gronway described crossing the Black Ridge on Utah highway 91 as “bouncing from rock to rock,” and then they had to cross the Virgin River twenty-one times before reaching the camp.5
After Congress created the National Park Service (NPS) in August 1916, Steven Mather, a wealthy Chicago businessman who had been an assistant for the parks in the Interior Department, was named director. Twenty-five year old Horace M. Albright was Mather’s assistant before and after creation of the park service, and much of the Wylie/Parry correspondence went through him. Surprisingly, Albright had never been out West to see Mukuntuweap National Monument until Douglas White prevailed on him to make a visit in the summer of 1917. White was passenger traffic manager for the Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad and one of the foremost promoters of southern Utah’s scenery. Albright met White in Los Angeles and they traveled by railroad and car to Cedar City arriving on September 5, 1917, where Gronway and Chauncey transported them to the monument. Years later Albright recalled his first impressions of Zion Canyon:
Whatever created this marvel of natural splendor, it was love at first sight for me. Ever after, I claimed this national park . . . as mine. From day one it was a personal crusade to mold it from a little national monument into a great national park.6
Albright promised the people of Southern Utah that once he returned to Washington, he would go “full steam ahead” to enlarge this monument, change the name to one preferred by the locals, and have it made a national park. He had already convinced Mather more visitors must be attracted and accommodated if the parks were to flourish. True to his promise, Albright drew up a proclamation for President Woodrow Wilson’s signature, one that enlarged the monument to 76,800 acres and renamed it Zion National Monument. Wilson signed the proclamation on March 18, 1918. National
park status came eighteen months later on November 19, 1919.7
The war in Europe overshadowed both the 1917 and 1918 seasons, as the United States entered the war in April 1917. Still bachelors, Gronway and Chauncey registered for the draft on June 5 and 6 in Cedar City, but apparently did not leave until sometime after Albright’s September visit. Unsuspecting of Wylie, the brothers gave him their proxy votes in order to keep the business running, as both Gronway and Chauncey volunteered for the United States Army Air Service. By January 1918, Chauncey was in pilot’s training at Berkeley Field, California. He sent a photo of his squadron as a postcard to his mother with the message that although many men had washed out of the program, he badly wanted to stay. The Parry brothers had long been fascinated with flying.
Unfortunately, Gronway was not there. He had been given a vaccination that almost killed him and left his eyes ulcerated. Doctors recommended a hot, dry climate and soon Gronway found himself in Mexico managing a large hog operation for Cudahy Company. It seemed like a perfect fit for a veterinarian and soldier. Later, he went to Elko, Nevada, to manage the large Kearns Ranch.
The war ended in November 1918, and by January 1920, Chauncey was back in Salt Lake City living with family and teaching high school.8 In May, he returned to the transportation company and discovered that Wylie had put them out of the company. Wylie, it seems, had hired another driver during the war and wanted Chauncey to work for him rather than as a partner. As had been their custom, the Parrys did not run away from fights and this became one of Chauncey’s better battles. In 1921, Chauncey applied for his own franchise to provide transportation. Following a Public Utilities Commission hearing, Wylie was told to “set arrangements straight” with the Parrys. Under this order, the National Park Transportation and Camping Company was reorganized as the Utah-Grand Canyon Transportation Company. Chauncey was once again in the driver’s seat providing transportation for Wylie’s customers. However, Wylie was still in debt to the Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad, and he asked the railroad to foreclose on his loan and just hire him for two thousand dollars a summer.
Tourism to the southern Utah parks increased during 1921 and Chauncey wrote to Gronway, who was still in Nevada, urging him to come back for the prospects were better than ever. Gronway returned to Cedar City and rejoined Chauncey in the summer of 1922. That fall, on Thanksgiving Day, Gronway married his college sweetheart, Afton Parrish, in Salt Lake City.
Bigger changes came in 1923 when Union Pacific began executing its plan to develop tourist facilities at Zion Canyon and the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, like other railroads had on the South Rim and at Yellowstone. Salt Lake City and Cedar City businessmen had been promoting these changes.
The Union Pacific took over the rail line, catapulting Los Angeles and Salt Lake’s Carl Gray into the presidency of the Union Pacific. Gray was keenly interested in increasing ticket sales to tourists to the national parks and in hauling iron by rail from mines opening near Cedar City. Stephen Mather had proposed that, like Yellowstone, a railroad should become developer of the tourist facilities in the Utah and Arizona parks.
Union Pacific was ready and willing, but factions in Washington, D.C. disliked Mather putting monopolies in control of the national parks and insisted that the Union Pacific create a subsidiary to operate concessions in the parks. In March 1923, the Utah Parks Company (UPC) was incorporated in Salt Lake City, with 98 percent of its capital stock subscribed by the Railroad Securities Company, a Union Pacific subsidiary. Typical of such legal agreements, the UPC reserved for itself the right to build or contract “for every conceivable lawful service” for tourists thereby ensuring quality service to its customers.
Although the Utah-Grand Canyon Transportation Company did not fit into the Utah Parks Company plan, it was not possible to transfer the entire operation immediately, so during the year 1923 Gronway and Chauncey continued to drive tourists from Cedar City to Zion National Park and on to the North Rim where the Wylie family had camps as they had done in 1922. The Parrys also coordinated the horses and wranglers for special tours and that put them in charge of arrangements for the most famous visitor to Zion, President Warren G. Harding in June 1923.
The Union Pacific managed to get the railroad spur built to Cedar City just in time for President Harding’s arrival as part of a western tour encouragedby Utah Senator Reed Smoot and Mrs. Harding. President and Mrs. Harding and an entourage of cabinet members, senators, church and state officials arrived on the first train to reach the new depot. From here, they traveled sixty dusty miles to Zion Canyon in the best automobiles Cedar City citizens had to offer. The entire population of each town along the way lined the road as the presidential party traveled through the community. Toquerville residents reportedly spent the previous night carrying buckets of water to sprinkle on their three-quarters of a mile road to keep the dust from stirring when the President’s car reached their town.
At the Wylie camp, the President shook hands with a few hundred people – including nine-year-old J.L. Crawford who remembered that J. Cecil Alter of the Utah State Historical Society was there photographing the event. Mr. Crawford wrote, “President Harding probably spent a miserable day visiting Zion. . . [He] didn’t want to come to Zion, but was pressured to do so by his wife and Senator Reed Smoot. He was known to be suffering from hemorrhoids and other physical problems.”9 These ailments were undoubtedlycompounded by the long, bumpy drive. After lunch the Parry brothers led a horseback ride up the canyon. A close look at the photo of the group shows the Parry brothers mixed in with LDS church President Heber J. Grant, Governor Charles R. Mabey, Senator Reed Smoot, Secretary of the Interior Hubert Work, Secretary of Agriculture Henry C. Wallace, Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, and others.
President Harding had some promising words that night for local residents. “To you men and women who came with your families in covered wagons into this country when the water still flowed through its natural gorges, the nation owes a debt of gratitude. I am the first President of the United States to come and express that gratitude, but I feel sure when I tell of this trip to my successors, all future presidents will come to visit this country of wonders.”10 Unfortunately, he went on to Yellowstone, then Alaska, and came back to San Francisco a sick man and died on August 2nd, only a few weeks after his visit to southern Utah.
The Parry brothers continued operating in 1924, 1925 and 1926 as the Utah-Grand Canyon Transportation Company, but were pressured continuously by the railroad to either sell out or be run out of business. While construction of the lodges in the parks was underway, the UPC also purchased some additional automobiles for its guests. These Buick passenger touring cars were brought to Cedar City for the summer of 1924. Negotiations proceeded during the next year and eventually Utah Parks bought out Gronway and Chauncey, and then hired them as their transportation superintendents for the next seventeen years. Gronway’s son Dale Parry recalled that “the negotiations to buy the Parry brothers out began in ’24 and went on for two years. By ’26 it was complete.”11 This was the time when the lodges were built at Bryce Canyon, Zion and Cedar Breaks, as well as the Bright Angel Lodge at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, which opened in 1928.
Thus, the influence of Gronway and Chauncey continued over the next two decades. They are recognized as the first Utah Parks’ “gearjammers,” and for establishing standards, schedules, training, and traditions that continueduntil the Union Pacific stopped the Utah Parks bus tours in 1972.
By the mid-1920s, Chauncey had explored on horseback, and by small airplane, almost all the rivers, canyons and mountain wilderness of southern Utah, and photographed the magnificent vistas and scenery. Some of his photos were tinted to show the colors of cliffs and hoodoos (rock formations of fantastic shape). Moving pictures, once filmed in front of cardboard mountains on the back lots of Hollywood, were now being made outdoors and Chauncey imagined the grandeur of southern Utah exposed to audiences through films. The Parry brothers began writing to the studios offering transportation and other services to those who chose to film at Zion or Bryce Canyon or on Cedar Mountain. They hit the jackpot with Tom Mix in the summer of 1924. It was front page news in the local paper: “TOM MIX AND COMPANY TO ARRIVE IN CEDAR CITY SUNDAY; COMPANY TO SPEND TEN DAYS AT ZION NATIONAL PARK BEFORE RODEO.”12 Based on the novel, The Orphan, the movie was released as The Deadwood Coach, and filmed in both Zion and Bryce between mid-August and the end of September.13
Filming for two movies followed in 1926 at Zion Park and Cedar Breaks, The Shepherd of the Hills and Ramona. Of course, these were silent movies and the black and white film did not do justice to the locations.
Chauncey finally decided it was time to get serious about selling southern Utah’s scenery to the Hollywood establishment. He and Gronway spent months taking photographs of every likely motion picture location spot in the area. Then, in the winter of 1928, Chauncey and his bride of six months, Helen Daynes, set off for Hollywood with his portfolio of photographs. It was later said that “With his good humor and vibrant leadership, Chauncey charmed MGM, 20th Century Fox and Paramount studios into serious consideration of Southern Utah as a movie location.”14
After a trip or two to Hollywood, Chauncey recognized that companies needed more than scenery; they had to have transportation, housing and meals for stars and crew, and preferably, all should be conveniently located. Chauncey bought a four-acre lot in the center of Kanab, remodeled the frame house that sat on the site, built a restaurant and additional motel units. He spent more than ninety thousand dollars on the enterprise and when he had finished, he raised a large sign proclaiming it to be “The Parry Lodge.”
Everyone in Kanab thought he had lost his mind, but Chauncey could now offer movie companies train transportation into Cedar City, accommodations at the newly completed El Escalante Hotel across from the depot, UPC busses and limos to transport the cast and crew to and from the locations, and if more convenient, his new lodge and restaurant in Kanab. Food on location came from the lodge’s kitchens. The community pushed for better roads and for electric power as well. Filming The Dude Ranger in the early 1930s had first advantage of power to the location. Soon, both Cedar City and Kanab were very involved in making movies. In interviews, Chauncey’s son-in-law, John Thomas, and daughter, Louise Parry Thomas, remembered how it affected the local communities: Then everybody in Kanab at one time or another was probably in more movies than most of the stars. They were Indians; they would decorate them all up, put them on a horse, and then in groups they would run down across in front of the camera, and do all these chasings and whatever else they had to do. But all of those horses came from the local people, except for their stars which they brought with them which they had specially trained to do that. Everything else came right out of Kanab area, and Fay Hamblin was their wrangler.15
Louise recalled that “There are hundreds if not thousands of people from all of southern Utah that maybe went to college with the money that they earned in the movies or were able to buy a home or a ranch or whatever. I mean, it was a huge economic support for southern Utah.16
With his attention on providing animals and props for the movies, Gronway began noticing old horse-drawn vehicles sitting idly in fields or on ranches deteriorating from neglect. His interest was aroused, and he thought they would have some historical value and ought to be saved for posterity. He began rebuilding them into working order and providing them to the movie companies. For the movie, Can’t Help Singing, which was filmed at Navajo Lake and other sites near Cedar Breaks, many Conestoga wagons were needed. Gronway set up a big lot on the east side of Main Street in downtown Cedar City and hired a crew of carpentersand laborers to help him get the wagons ready using “running gear” he had acquired during his travels.17
With so much to do, Chauncey hired a younger brother, Whitney Parry, to run the Parry Lodge and to provide meals for the stars and crew. He drove what was known as the “pie wagon,” and cast and crew knew it was dinner time when he arrived at a movie set. His cooking made both him and the lodge famous.
During trips to Hollywood, Chauncey and Gronway discovered polo and were soon playing and training horses for the sport. They made friends with Will Rogers and were guests at his Santa Monica ranch. The Parrys mingled with the most affluent names in Hollywood. Genuine friendships resulted from these trips and from offering good service when they came to southern Utah. The Parry children have fond memories of the moviemaking years and the conduct of their fathers and uncles that, while endearing them to the movie stars, also benefitted the southern Utah economy during the depressed 1930s. Chauncey’s daughter Louise rememberswhen Spencer Tracy and Clark Gable came to southern Utah to go hunting with her father. “That was just a man-thing ritual that every fall those three would go out cougar hunting. My dad didn’t hunt; he didn’t like to kill things. So, he used his camera. He hunted with a camera, and these two hunted with their guns . . .” She thought her father made friends easily and the movie stars appreciated his sincerity and his genuineness. “He knew how to treat them, and how to talk to them, and they just had a great time.”18
Gronway also endeared himself to the local businessmen who provided services to the movie makers. Dale Parry remembered going with his father when “After a movie, we would leave the Parry Lodge and start on one side of Kanab and he’d take his checkbook and they’d just go down one side and go into all of the businesses he dealt with on the motion picture. . . He'd walk in, find out what his bill was, [and] write out a check.”19 Thus, the Parrys maintained community support for future productions.
Chauncey Parry’s life was cut short in March 1943, when his car was broadsided at an intersection in Cedar City and he died from his injuries a few days later in the local hospital. He was only forty-seven. Gronway, Whitney and Fay Hamblin continued providing for the movie and television companies into the 1960s. Whit ran the Parry Lodge until his death in 1967. In his seventies, Gronway continued to restore western wagons, which are now the Gronway Parry Collection of Horse-drawn Vehicles and Agricultural Implements at the Frontier Homestead State Park Museum in Cedar City. Gronway was also involved in many more activities including land development, home building, and as Cedar City mayor. He died at age eighty in Cedar City in 1969. The Parry brothers invested their lives in rural Utah during difficult economic years and attracted both tourism and the movie industry to the area. There is little doubt that Gronway and Chauncey Parry were southern Utah’s greatest salesmen.
Janet B. Seegmiller is Special Collections Librarian at the Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University. She is also co-director of the Utah Parks Company History Project, a partnership with her library, the Iron County Historical Society and Frontier Homestead State Park Museum. She would like to thank Ryan Paul, project co-director, Carol Ann Parry Nyman, Dale Parry, and Louise Parry Thomas, children of Gronway and Chauncey for their help in writing this history.
NOTES
1 Inez Cooper, “The Development of Zion Canyon as a Tourist Attraction,” 2-3, unpublished manuscript in the Inez Cooper Collection, Special Collections, Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.
2 Angus M. Woodbury, “A History of Southern Utah and Its National Parks,” Utah Historical Quarterly 12 (July-October 1944): 190-91.
3 Ibid., 187 and 202.
4 Gronway Parry to the Department of Interior, January 18, 1917. Copy from Louise Parry Thomas in Special Collections, Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.
5 Cooper, “Development of Zion Canyon,” 6-7.
6 Horace Albright, Creating the National Park Service: The Missing Years (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999), 243.
7 Ibid.
8 U.S. Census, 1920, District 85, Sheet 71, Salt Lake City, Utah.
9 J.L. Crawford to author, 2005.
10 “Southern Utah Gives Glad Welcome to Nation’s Chief Executive,” Iron County Record, June 29, 1923.
11 Dale Parry, interview by Janet Seegmiller, July 4, 2004, p. 8, UPC #59 Special Collections, Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.
12 Iron County Record, August 15, 1924.
13 James D’Arc, When Hollywood Came to Town: A History of Moviemaking in Utah (Layton: Gibbs-Smith, 2010), 34-38.
14 John W. Thomas, “Chauncey Gardner Parry – Modern Pioneer.” Typescript biography, Special Collections, Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.
15 John [Jack] Thomas, interview by Janet Seegmiller, July 18, 2003, p. 4 UPC #15b, Special Collections, Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.
16 Louise Parry Thomas, interview by Janet Seegmiller, July 18, 2003, p. 4, UPC #15b, Special Collections, Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.
17 Dale Parry, interview, 30.
18 Louise Parry Thomas interview, 6.
19 Dale Parry interview, 33.