Kanab Lodge

Did You Know?

• The Parry Cafeteria, which opened in 1925, was originally the Jepson house, built in 1885.
• A 1938 laundry addition served as a central laundry for all of the Utah Parks Company's park operations in the area.

History

The house that would become Kanab Lodge was originally built, most likely, for Frank and Lovinnia Farnsworth. Over the years, it changed hands several times before Lewis and Vinnie Farnsworth Jepson—Vinnie being the Farnsworths’ daughter—took ownership in 1904. The Jepsons completed the upstairs of the 1½-story home, adding a wooden bathtub that was reportedly one of only two built-in bathtubs in Kanab at the time, and they probably extended the rear of the property.

In 1925, they sold the house to the Hiway Tourist Park and Company, a local tour bus operation run by the Parry brothers: Gronway, Caleb, and Chauncey. The Parrys partnered with William W. Wylie, a Yellowstone tourism pioneer, to offer tours of the Grand Canyon’s north rim, Zion, Bryce, and Cedar Breaks National Monument. That same year, they turned the Jepson house into the Parry Cafeteria. Under pressure from the Union Pacific Railroad, the Parry brothers sold the cafeteria and transportation company to Union Pacific in 1927, though they kept some bus routes, and Chauncey Parry became superintendent of the bus line.

The railroad then expanded the lodge, finishing in 1932 with a lobby, dining room, kitchen, toilets, and a souvenir shop. The restaurant served lunch only, and exclusively for bus tour patrons—never the general public. A laundry addition in 1938 became a central facility for all the railroad’s park operations in the area. As more tourists drove their own cars, the bus business faded.

The restaurant and curio shop closed in 1960, and the laundry shut down in 1967. The property sat empty until 1973, when Stan Clark bought it, renovated the restaurant, and turned the laundry into a theater, operating as The Old West Company until 1978. In 1980, a partnership purchased the site and opened the Territorial Inn Restaurant, which ran until 1987, when it became the Wok Inn. Since 2014, the restaurant has been known as Jake’s Chaparral.

Description

The Kanab Lodge began as a modest 1½-story brick house set on a sandstone foundation. Later, a series of southern additions—a lobby, a two-story dining room with a kitchen, an overflow dining room, and a storage area connecting to a former theater/laundry turned dance hall—greatly expanded the complex. A semi-enclosed interior courtyard was designed to resemble a faux-Western streetscape. The property was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2003.