Little Hollywood Wild West Fest

A rearing white horse marks the west end of Center Street in Kanab. Behind it stands the Little Hollywood Museum, a nonprofit that keeps actual movie sets on the back lot of its Trading Post. Among them is the homestead set from Clint Eastwood’s The Outlaw Josey Wales. For two days each September the lot is the hub of Kanab’s Little Hollywood Wild West Fest. The daytime program, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., is free, and the museum, as host, asks for donations. Three other downtown venues serve as the festival’s spokes: the Historic Redstone Theater, the Parry Lodge Barn and the Kanab Center. The first festival, in 2026, filled Friday and Saturday, September 11 and 12, and held evening events on three nights.

Gunfights on the museum lot

The shows on the lot belong to Buck Montgomery, a Hollywood stuntman known in town as Dr. Buck, and his troupe, the Wild Bunch. They stage comedy gunfights and stunt shows for all ages. The festival’s own page says the shows are not historically correct and offers “hysterically correct” in its place. In 2026 a special guest, Tom B., added gun spinning, trick roping, the bullwhip and a fire whip. Live music played from the Gunsmoke Stage, and the festival invited listeners to take a seat or a patch of grass.

Western actors meet visitors on the grounds and sign autographs and pose for photographs in Giff’s Green Room. The 2026 guests included Rudy Ramos of Yellowstone, Peter Sherayko of Tombstone, Mitch Vogel of Bonanza, Darby Hinton of Daniel Boone, and the stuntman Diamond Farnsworth, whom one paper listed for Young Guns. A display of the actor Clint Walker’s belongings stood nearby, and the festival told visitors to listen for Cowboy Bob’s bugle.

Children go to the Kids Korral, run by Cowgirl RaeChele and her Giddy Up Round Up hired hands. The games are calf roping, longhorn ring toss, cow milking and stick pony races. A scavenger hunt map sends search parties after prizes, with a chance of meeting Joe “Hoppy” Sullivan, a Hopalong Cassidy tribute artist. Merchant Row holds the handcrafted goods and homemade provisions of artisans and crafters.

Contests run both days. The yee-haw contest is open to every age. The beard and moustache contest goes by the name Facial Hair Fiasco, and the festival calls its entrants “Whiskerino Contestants.” The costume contest asks for a best lawdog, outlaw, cowboy, cowgirl or Western movie star. In 2026 it posted divisions for Old Wild West, “Hollywood” West, Workin’ West and Victorian West. Winners take prizes and bragging rights.

Word-slingers in the Parry Barn

Cowboy poets and storytellers, “Word-Slingers” in the festival’s term, hold the historic Parry Lodge Barn from 10 to 4 both days. Andy Nelson serves as the poetry trail boss and works cowboy history and humor into rhyme and meter and into told stories. Sam DeLeeuw, a nationally known poet, rides along as his ramrod. Saturday adds a poetry contest.

At the Kanab Center, the Grand Staircase Gymnasium houses a quilt show, put on with help from quilt guilds, and a library book sale, open the same daytime hours as the museum lot.

Three evenings on Center Street

The evening events take tickets. On Thursday, September 10, 2026, the Redstone Theater screened the 1993 Western Tombstone. The theater opened in 1934 and is now owned by Dan Dillman. Peter Sherayko sat in the audience. He played Texas Jack Vermillion, one of Wyatt Earp’s Vendetta Riders. The festival’s page credits him as a technical advisor on the film and the supplier of its historically correct weapons, and it set time after the picture for his behind-the-scenes stories.

Friday night at the Redstone opened with a panel of the festival’s actors telling stories of their television and film careers. A live old-time radio show followed, Little Hollywood Rides Again!, performed by the Ricochet Radio Ranglers, whom news and tourism listings call award-winning, with Nicholas Meyers as special guest. The audience watches the actors and the sound effects man work on stage. The festival warns that the troupe carries “a wagon load of shenanigans” and that a member of the audience may make a stage debut.

Saturday closes at Giff’s Barbecue, which runs a restaurant on the museum grounds, with a chuck wagon dinner among the festival’s stars. The evening brings entertainment and presentations in a climate-controlled indoor room, with seats for 75 and beer and wine for sale, identification checked.

A stuntman’s festival

The Southern Utah News reported the 2026 edition as the inaugural one. Montgomery organized it after the town’s long-running Western Legends Heritage and Music Festival was discontinued. The paper says Montgomery has worked as a stuntman, stunt coordinator and performer on Western film and television over several decades and has staged Wild West shows. The festival is a production of Dr. Buck Entertainment and Riding For The Brand Special Events. Its volunteers are called the Posse. A recruiting post said they may come Old West dressed, Hollywood Western dressed, New West dressed or “No West” dressed, so long as they come dressed.

The museum traces southern Utah’s work as a Hollywood back lot to Tom Mix in Deadwood Coach, and it lists John Wayne’s Stagecoach and the television series The Lone Ranger and Gunsmoke among the productions made around Kanab. The festival counts more than 100 movie and television Westerns filmed in “Little Hollywood.” It names the stuntman and character actor Neil Summers, 1944 to 2025, as the person who appeared in more of them than anyone else.

The festival’s site gives the 2027 dates as Thursday through Saturday, September 9, 10 and 11. Summers’s image is on its logo.