This Utah Town Is the Hollywood of the High Desert
Everything from classic Westerns to ‘Thelma & Louise’ was filmed in Moab.
Rafting down the Colorado River in the high desert of Moab, Utah, the scenery reads like the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In the distance, our guide points out the mesa top where Bon Jovi filmed the music video for “Blaze of Glory.” Around the bend, we spy remnants of a John Wayne movie set where the Colorado River subbed in for Rio Grande’s titular river. Further still, a makeshift town provides the set dressing for Kevin Costner’s wildly ambitious Western opus, Horizon: An American Saga. I came to Moab to hike and raft, but I left unexpectedly star-struck.
I had been to Moab a few times in the past, but mostly to visit its more well-trod attractions, like Arches and Canyonlands National Park. I knew Thelma & Louise famously filmed the climactic cliff dive in Moab, with Fossil Point masquerading as the Grand Canyon, but beyond that, my cinematic knowledge of the area was limited to James Franco cutting off his own arm in a slot canyon in 127 Hours (no thanks). On my most recent trip, though, visiting a new side of Moab revealed a whole new facet of a region I thought I knew, casting a spotlight on the high-desert town that helped originate the Western film genre.
Long before Kevin Costner, Bon Jovi, or Geena Davis came to town, Moab was an early progenitor of the Western film industry, thanks to the pioneering efforts of the Moab to Monument Valley Film Commission. It’s the longest running film commission in the world, dating back to 1949, when John Ford filmed Wagon Master—an early Western tracing the harrowing journey of outcast Mormons en route to the San Juan Valley—and introduced American audiences to the kinds of desert backdrops, red rocks, and gnarly canyons that would come to define the genre. The success of Ford’s production (and its boon to the local economy) inspired George White, a local rancher who served as one of the movie’s location guides, to found the film commission to market the region as a movie-making hub.
Prior to Wagon Master, Ford had filmed several movies (such as Stagecoach) in Monument Valley, along the Arizona-Utah border. By 1949, though, he was searching for fresh terrain. He was introduced to White, who gave the director a thorough tour of Moab, inspiring him to film both Wagon Master and Rio Grande there. While Ford’s Monument Valley movies preceded his Moab work, some of the earliest Western films ever made were adaptations of author Zane Grey’s Moab-set stories, The Vanishing American (1925), The Water Hole (1928), and The Lone Star Ranger (1930). When film studios sought to adapt his novels, Grey insisted that they be filmed in the same place that inspired his original work.
Alongside Ford, another John made his mark on Moab. An icon of the Western genre, John Wayne began making films in Moab after starring in Stagecoach, following Ford further into the wilds of the high desert. Rio Grande, which filmed at White’s Ranch, became one of Wayne’s most iconic roles, catapulting Western film into the national lexicon.
Over the ensuing decades, following in the wagon tracks laid by Ford and Wayne, more than 200 movies, shows, commercials, and music videos have been filmed in and around Moab. In addition to critical and commercial hits like Thelma & Louise and 127 Hours, these run the gamut from Breakdown (a 1997 action film about Kurt Russell trying to save his kidnapped wife) and Geronimo: An American Legend (a 1993 biopic starring Gene Hackman, Robert Duvall, and Matt Damon) to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Will Smith’s After Earth, Mission Impossible II, Con-Air, and Austin Powers in Goldmember. Even Marlboro was all in on Moab, filming its original commercial at an off-road overlook now known, aptly, as Marlboro Point. Bon Jovi was so taken with the region that he set fire to the top of a butte, to the chagrin of preservationists.
Much of Moab’s movie history can be traced along scenic Route 128 through Professor Valley (also known as Castle Valley), where 80% of Moab productions were made. Hugging the mighty Colorado River, flanked by towering canyons and majestic mesas, it’s easy to see what drew Western stars here in the first place—and what keeps them coming. While all genres have filmed here, Moab’s grandiose desert vistas helped set the stage as an enduring epicenter of Western cinema. Near where Onion Creek trickles into the Colorado, you can still see remnants of the Rio Grande set. Further down river, past the ghost town that Costner built, Red Cliffs Lodge is located where White’s Ranch once stood, beckoning guests with riverside cabins, pecan-crusted trout, and its very own Moab Museum of Film and Western Heritage. The free museum, on the very grounds where John Wayne once strode as Lieutenant Colonel Kirby Yorke, offers a deeply detailed dive into the origins of the Moab to Monument Valley Film Commission, the ranch’s evolution from cattle-raising to filmmaking, and its role in other films like Rock Hudson’s Taza, Son of Cochise, Henry Fonda-starring Warlock, and another Wayne flick, The Commancheros.
Today, history lives on as Moab remains at the forefront of film. More recently, HBO filmed much of Westworld in Moab, Michael Bay made part of Transformers: Age of Extinction here, Ang Lee had the Hulk sprint through Arches National Park, and Gore Verbinski had the ill-advised idea to cast Johnny Depp and Armie Hammer in a remake of The Lone Ranger. The biggest Moab moment yet is Costner’s ambitious multi-film project, Horizons: An American Saga. Fresh off the success of Yellowstone, and having cemented his Western cred in movies like Dances with Wolves, Costner has become the veritable John Wayne of his time. For his four-part Horizons gamble, the actor-director brought one of the largest productions the town has ever seen. The first two movies are done, and despite not-so-great box office returns for the first chapter, Costner is full-steam ahead on the second half of his Moab saga.
For those looking to explore some of Moab’s movie magic, a bit of preliminary planning goes a long way. First, Moab is quite remote, with no public transit to speak of, sparse rideshare options, and once you’re out in nature, very little—if any—service. Thus, renting a car is pivotal, and it’s most easily done at gateway airports like Grand Junction, Colorado (113 miles away) or Salt Lake City (234 miles away). Relating to the lack of service, make sure that you’re plotting any trails or routes before you hit the road, since it’s pretty hard to do without any signal. During the peak tourism season, spring through mid-fall, Arches is so popular that the national park requires advanced reservations for timed entry. From April 1-October 31, visitors must purchase an entry ticket online, for any slot between 7 am and 4 pm. But be careful if you're visiting during warmer months, as temperatures can get really high, making mornings and evenings an ideal time to explore. During off-peak season, visitors can come and go at leisure—just know that winter can get brutally cold, and especially at higher elevations (like Canyonlands), snowy roads can inhibit—or fully prevent—navigation.
In a state renowned for its film festival, Moab has carved out its own niche as a high-desert Hollywood all its own. While filming Thelma & Louise, director Ridley Scott said, “I have seen more wonderful and varied scenery in a single day in Moab than any other day I have scouted.” It’s a testament to a place of striking singularity, where the stars in the night sky are matched by stars on the screen, and where—since the dawn of John Wayne and Marlboro cigarettes—the region’s mesas, arches, buttes, and canyons have defined the all-American Western film genre forever.