Four Westworld Filming Locations in Southern Utah
If you haven't watched Westworld, you've heard of it. If you haven't heard of it, here's the trailer: This popular HBO series is set in a dystopian not-so-distant future. Westworld is a theme park for the wealthy and a place humans can visit to “live without limits" (for $40,000 a day). This alternate world, which looks a lot like the Wild Wild West, is home to robots designed to look like humans. This show has garnered a dedicated following, and for good reason. The complicated narrative and plot twists have viewers theorizing for days. The seasons take quite a long time to produce, so fans wait for years for a new season to come out.
Unlike some other big-name shows, you don’t have to travel very far to get to these filming locations. Many iconic shots in Westworld, especially in Seasons 1 and 2, are filmed in Southern Utah. The open and barren landscape made Utah the perfect backdrop for a larger-than-life theme park. There’s something unearthly about Southern Utah. If you want to take your own tour of a few of the filming locations, here are four spots to visit:
Monument Valley
Dolores and Teddy ride together into the sunset in almost every episode of the first season. Sweeping shots show giant sandstone rock formations standing above them. It's easy to get lost in the beautiful cinematography of the show. Remember, though, Westworld is a lot closer than you think. The sweeping landscape shots were filmed in Monument Valley and Castle Valley.
Lake Powell
At the end of the first season and the beginning of the second, quite a few scenes take place in the water. It appears that Westworld is on an island, adding to the allure of the park. We can't say too much about these scenes because, well, spoiler alert. Those water scenes, though, were shot on Lake Powell. Lake Powell sits right in the middle of the Arizona-Utah deserts.
Coral Pink Sand Dunes
In Season 2, Ghost Nation makes its first appearance. Many of the scenes with Ghost Nation are filmed at a small state park in Southern Utah: Coral Pink Sand Dunes. In the show, it appears that the characters have traveled far beyond their own world. In reality, the filming location is right next door.
Route 128
To enter Westworld, guests must take a train into the theme park. The show features many scenes of characters gazing out a dusty window into a red desert landscape. The road that takes guests into Westworld is actually Utah’s Route 128. To film the shots, they put a train car on the back of a semi flatbed and drove down Route 128.
