The Utah Parks Company, a subsidiary of Union Pacific Railroad, owned and operated restaurants, lodging, and bus tours in Bryce Canyon and Zion National Parks, the north rim of Grand Canyon National Park, and Cedar Breaks National Monument from the 1920s until 1972. Operating as a concessionaire of the National Park Service, the company operated from a base in Cedar City, Utah. The company's bus tours connected there with Union Pacific trains as well as tour buses from Los Angeles, San Francisco and other west coast cities, and offered a loop tour of the region's parks and monuments, escorted by a Utah Parks Company driver/guide. History Shortly after the National Park Service was created through the 1916 Organic Act, the brothers Gronway and Chauncey Perry applied for a transportation concession to take tourists from Cedar City to Mukuntuweap National Monument (later Zion National Park), incorporating as the National Park Transportation and Camping Company with William Wylie in 1917. The Parry brothers had previously operated a shuttle service from the Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad to St. George, Utah which started in 1915; the new transportation concession operated with a fleet of used vehicles: one seven-passenger Hudson, a Ford Model T, and three Cadillacs. The shoestring operation was run entirely by the two brothers, who were often so busy running the company they enlisted their younger brother, Whit, to drive tourists when he was just 13 years old. When the United States entered World War I, the two older brothers joined the Army and turned over their proxies in the company to Wylie; upon their return in 1920, they discovered that Wylie had forced them out. After a court battle, Chauncey Perry and Wylie reconciled and restarted the company in 1921, now renamed to the Utah—Grand Canyon Transportation Company since they now provided trips to the Grand Canyon as well. After Wylie left the company, Chauncey invited Gronway to rejoin and Chauncey served as a guide during President Warren Harding's trip to Zion in 1923. Union Pacific acquired the Los Angeles & Salt Lake in 1921 and extended a branch of the line from Lund to Cedar City in 1923, incorporating its Utah Parks Company subsidiary that year; the railroad-backed company bought out the Parry brothers in 1926 and installed them as company superintendents. The typical route to Zion from the southwest was a dead-end at the time; tourists going