The famous bicycle riding sequence was shot in a spot twenty-five miles (forty kilometers) east of Hurricane, Utah, in a ghost town that dated from around 1900 (it was a state park at the time of filming) that had been a Mormon settlement, but was abandoned when a nearby river flooded it out. A few relic buildings remain standing, including a Mormon church, a few houses, a few farm buildings, and a barn. The film company was based in St. George, Utah. Production designer Philip M. Jefferies and his construction department built the cabin set at the center of the ghost town's main street, opposite the small brick Mormon church. The cabin set was built utilizing walls that could be pulled away from the structure, allowing a camera crew to light and film inside the cabin, with windows for capturing Paul Newman riding his bicycle in the main street area. The "studio cabin" was left intact after filming was completed, becoming a curiosity feature of the ghost town's remaining standing structures. Visitors have since stripped the area of the post and rail fencing built as part of the town's structure set decorating. In 1981, the film's original producer Paul Monash and Lawrence Schiller (who was a still photographer on "Butch Cassidy") joined forces to produce Child Bride of Short Creek (1981), an NBC movie of the week. With production designer Hub Braden, they returned to the "Butch Cassidy" ghost town to see if it could serve as a location for the film they were about to produce. The site had been stripped bare except for the shrubs and trees and a few remaining structures. The location site was revived, adding false structure fronts, set dressing, outhouses, and fencing, and can be seen in the final film.

Film

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