Kanab rounds up screen cowboys for honors at annual Western fest

Bruce Boxleitner has always had a soft spot in his heart for Kanab. "That's where I got my first big break. What an experience it was!"

Boxleitner was chosen to play Luke Macahan in the television series "How the West Was Won," which also starred James Arness, who had just left "Gunsmoke" after 20 seasons.

"Jim was very excited not to be playing Matt Dillon," Boxleitner said by phone from his home in California. "And I was a young, gangly looking thing. I was 25, but I looked 17. We had a marvelous cast — Richard Kiley, Eva Marie Saint.

"And the country was so beautiful. I remember the Parry Lodge. I remember eating breakfast there. It was a huge time in my life."

Robert Horton also got his start as a young TV cowboy. He is best-known for his role as Flint McCullough on the "Wagon Train" series, a character he so took to heart that he created a "biography" for Flint to keep him consistent for all the various scriptwriters and directors on the show.

Between 1957 and 1965, some of that series was also filmed in Kanab.

Horton has another connection with Utah; some of his ancestors came across the Plains with the Mormon pioneers — and his grandfather, Joseph W. McMurrin, was called to the First Council of the Seventy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1898. "I still have lots of relatives there," Horton said during a telephone interview from his California home.

Boxleitner and Horton are the latest inductees into Kanab's "Little Hollywood Walk of Fame" and will be honored at this year's Western Legends Round-up, which begins Tuesday.

The festival celebrates all things Western but particularly Western movie lore. Included in the activities are the West's only cowboy-poetry rodeo, a Western film festival, quick draws and fiddle competitions, arts and crafts exhibits, a horse and longhorn cattle parade, an authentic wagon trek, Western dress-up contests, Navajo weavers, a Western art show, a quilt show, and headline entertainers, including Ian Tyson, R.W. Hampton and Red Steagall.

"Each year we add features," said Robert Houston, chairman of the festival. "When you combine the Round-up's festivities with all the natural attractions in the area, it makes a family outing you can't find anywhere else in the world."

Western movies are a focus of the festival because, dating back to 1924, "there've been more than 200 Western films, featuring 200 stars, filmed around here. That's a big part of our heritage."

And not just for Kanab, but for America, he said. "One thing we try to do is honor the role of the cowboy and the cowboy model."