St.George, Utah

John Wayne would return to St. George, Utah, almost a quarter of a century after filming one scene for The Big Trail. For the epic outdoor melodrama The Conqueror, RKO used breathtaking desert locations around St.George, doubling for the Gobi desert.  Ten shooting sites were chosen. 

Utah State Route 18 travels through Dammeron Valley. To get to the park, located in the Red Cliffs Desert Reserve, turn onto Snow Canyon Drive. The John Wayne movie locations are to the left and the right of the road which was originally bulldozed into the principal location of Snow Canyon by the RKO road crew. From this same spot, photographed in 2025, director Dick Powell took a long shot of the Tartar trek in 1955. 

This is one of the wide shots of The Conqueror that showcases the red rocks of Snow Canyon to their best advantage. This is where Susan Hayward's entourage filmed their trek through the Gobi Desert.

The spot of the first encounter between Mongol warrior and Tartar woman: John Wayne, a hunting falcon on his arm, rides up to confront Susan Hayward. Following down the road, this was shot to the right side of Snow Canyon Drive, a rock with a striking white cross layer in the background.

 The filming sites of The Conqueror run along the paved roads. This is the exact location of the first encounter of John Wayne and Susan Hayward, as the warrior holds the caravan in what is the Gobi desert in the movie. Mormon pioneers „discovered“ Snow Canyon in the 1850s.The park features a canyon carved from the red and white Navajo sandstone of the Red Mountains, as well as the extinct Santa Clara Volcano, lava tubes, lava flows, and sand dunes. 

This is the exact spot, on a rise of a lava flow in Utah's beautiful Snow Canyon near St.George, where John Wayne as Ghengis Khan, accompanied by Pedro Armendariz, watches the wagon train on the plain. The parking lot visible below was named Upper Galoot in reference to John Wayne.

John Wayne as Ghengis Khan and his blood brother Pedro Armendariz spy on the wagon train on the plain. The lava flow to the left of Snow Canyon Drive which was picked for this breathtaking shot remains unchanged 70 years after the filming of The Conqueror.

 The sanddunes near the north entrance of Snow Canyon were the location for one major battle between Mongols and Tartars in The Conqueror, horse stunts courtesy of 2nd unit director Cliff Lyons and 150 stunt riders. 

The sanddunes provided the soft landings for the stuntmen in a major battle in John Wayne's The Conqueror. The same dunes were acutually put to good use in three Robert Redford movies: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (trying to escape the posse) as well as Jeremiah Johnson (finding a man buried up to the head in the sands). A little further up is the place where Redford lets the stallion go in the finale of The Electric Rider.

When The Conqueror wrapped August 17, 1954, Snow Canyon wasn’t finished as a movie location. The following year, Ray Milland used the same sites for his western A Man Alone. 

The Conqueror movie company also shot at the bench near Harrisburg, 12 miles north of St. George, now an archeological site. Different types of dinosaur tracks are evident in its rock strata.

The same mountain range appears in the first frame of The Conqueroer: Howard Hughes's producer credit is superimposed over this shot of the Red Cliffs outside Harrisburg.

John Wayne rides into battle as The Conqueror: this location can be found at Red Cliffs near Harrisburg. 

The plains with the Red Cliffs near Harrisburg became the setting for the climactic battle between John Wayne's Mongols and Tartars, filmed over a six-day period. 

Red Cliffs near Harrisburg was also the location for for the torture scene in which John Wayne as Genghis Khan is harnessed to Susan Hayward's ox cart.The Conqueror company was able to use the trails that lead into the area to bring in their heavy equipment.  US-15 runs alongside this National Conservation area.

This village set for the John Wayne epic The Conqueror was erected in what is now the National Conservation area near Harrisburg, in the very same place where the fort was built for a Gary Cooper classic just one year after. 

Remants of the set for a late Gary Cooper melodrama, with the Red Cliffs near Harrisburg in the background. The very same spots was used for major scenes in John Wayne's The Conqueror just one year before filming They Came to Cordura took place. The remants of the set of a mexican stronghold slowly succumb to the elements.

This bluff near the ghost town of Harrisburg was used for the epic shot of stunt riders following John Wayne as Ghengis Khan into battle. 

The same bluff near Harrisburg today, a walking distance from the location used for Gary Cooper's They Came to Cordura, which followed a year after the making of the John Wayne epic. 

Dick Powell also directed his Technicolor cameras to Warner Valley, fifteen miles from St.George. This was the location for the elaborate village set of The Conqueror, what John Wayne's tartars called their home in the first half of the picture. 

This stretch of desert in Utah's Warner Valley is where the Tartars set up their tents, led by John Wayne in the title role as The Conqueror. The distinctive red rock formation provided  the dramatic background. 

Warner Valley Road cuts through this desert of the Warner Draw Debris Basin Reservoir. This camera angle showed John Wayne as The Conqueror, as he brings  Susan Hayward to his Tartar camp.

The same angle some 70 years after filming The Conqueror: Warner Valley, 15 miles from St.George, was the movie location for John Wayne's tartar camp. 

For five weeks in St. George, RKO had rented the private residence from Wendell and Betty Motter for John Wayne. 

During production of The Conqueror, this house in St.George was rented for the film's star Susan Hayward. Their houses were on the opposite sides of the same street, and Susan Hayward frequently came over to see John Wayne.

John Wayne and the RKO company screened the daily rushes of The Conqueror in St.George's local movie theatre, now the Electric Theater Center at Tabernacle Street. 

RKO got permission to use Dixie High School for dressing rooms and the storage of 1,200 costumes during production of The Conqueror. Dixie High School was the first high school in St. George, and was founded in 1911. It is located  located at 350 East 700 South. . All nine buses from the school district were employed to transport the crew to the desert locations aroudn St.George.