The area was first settled in 1865 by a
Mormon group led by Peter Shirts. This early settlement was named
Rockhouse, for Shirts's strongly built
sandstone house. After the end of the
Black Hawk War in 1867 settlers began to arrive at a rapid pace. Farming produced good crops for several years, but
irrigation was very difficult; each spring the
surface runoff water was absorbed into the desert soil too quickly to properly water the fields. In 1870 the residents agreed to move the settlement. They divided in two groups; half the people went about upstream and founded the town of
Pahreah. In 1871, early Mormon leader and pioneer
John D. Lee came to the Paria area, fleeing investigators of the
Mountain Meadows massacre. He constructed a
dam and irrigation ditches with the help of many locals and passersby, including members of
John Wesley Powell's second
Colorado River expedition. Paria grew through the 1870s, gaining a
general store, church, and a number of sandstone houses as the population grew. However, the town was hit hard in the 1880s. The Paria River flooded every year from 1883 to 1888, washing away fields and even some buildings. People started to move away. By 1892 there were only eight families left, but for some reason the town was granted a
post office that year, under the name
Paria. Not much changed until a small
gold mining operation was established here in 1911. Within a year, that too was wiped out by flooding. The post office closed in 1914. A lone bachelor
prospector held out until 1929, then Paria was empty. ==Filming location==