Pahreah was a pioneer town along the Paria River that grew from 1870 to 1883 and had faded away by the 1930s, leaving only a few remains about a mile and a half beyond the rebuilt Paria movie set. Life in towns like Pahreah involved hard work in difficult conditions, unlike the larger-than-life Western movies later associated with the area. The Paria River served as the pioneers' travel route, but quicksand and flash floods regularly caused them to lose teams and wagons. Just downstream from the town are signs of a mining operation that never struck it rich. The town and river names come from Paiute words meaning muddy water or elk river, depending on the source, and the original spelling, Pahreah, appeared on Major John Wesley Powell's 1870s survey maps.