The Parry brothers built a roadside motel on Center Street in Kanab in summer 1931. Whit, Chaunce, and Gron Parry had grown up in Kanab and wanted to build something that would make the town a destination for the tourists beginning to follow the new National Park system west. They chose correctly. By the late 1930s, Hollywood had found the canyon country around Kanab — light, color, scale, accessibility — and the lodge that the Parrys had built became the place where film crews stayed and stars slept.
Over the next four decades, more than 100 productions shot in the Kanab corridor, and the lodge hosted a guest list that reads like a mid-century studio contract: John Wayne, Frank Sinatra, Clint Eastwood, Gregory Peck, Maureen O'Hara, Dean Martin, Roy Rogers, Ronald Reagan, Sammy Davis Jr. The pool was reportedly commissioned by John Wayne. Kanab earned the nickname "Little Hollywood" largely because of what happened at the lodge at 89 E Center St. The Saturday Evening Post named the Parry Lodge one of the ten best roadside inns in the country in 1956; LIFE magazine featured it in 1968. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The lodge today runs 89 rooms across five buildings spanning two city blocks. The restaurant, the pool, and the Old Barn Theater are still there. The Yelp listing notes new ownership as of May 2025 — the Parry family is no longer the operator, and the identity of the current owners is not yet publicly confirmed. The building and its history are unchanged.