Steve and Susan Dodson built Paria Outpost & Outfitters in 1998 on Highway 89 between mile markers 21 and 22, at the Paria River bridge — Big Water, Kane County, Utah, a community of approximately 400 people adjacent to Glen Canyon National Recreation Area and Lake Powell. The location is not an accident: it positions the Dodsons at the physical threshold between Highway 89 traffic and the 1.5-million-acre backcountry of Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument, Vermilion Cliffs National Monument, and the Paria Canyon Wilderness.
Steve is a Utah-licensed general contractor and a backcountry explorer with twenty-plus years of terrain knowledge across the canyon country that surrounds the outpost. Susan holds a master’s degree in biology and spent years as an aquatic ecologist with the National Park Service. Together they offer guided photography workshops, hiking tours to The Wave, White Pocket, South Coyote Buttes, and Paria Canyon — the kind of remote locations that require both physical knowledge and permit coordination to access safely. Accommodation ranges from bed-and-breakfast rooms at $100 per night to dry camping on the property.
In a jurisdiction where the nearest town of any scale is Page, Arizona, thirty miles south, Paria Outpost functions as the de facto orientation center for a landscape most visitors have never navigated independently.
**Verification notes** Website live; Steve and Susan Dodson confirmed as owners on About page; 1998 founding confirmed; address Highway 89, mile 21–22, Big Water UT 84741 confirmed; Steve’s contractor background and Susan’s NPS ecology background confirmed; guided tour destinations and accommodation confirmed on site.