Cannonville is a small farming town on Scenic Byway 12 in the upper Paria Valley, at 5,886 feet. It is the northern gateway to Kodachrome Basin State Park, nine miles south on a paved road.

Cottonwood Canyon Road also begins here, leading south into Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument toward Grosvenor Arch. Beyond the paved stretch to Kodachrome, the road is dirt and can be impassable when wet.

The first settlement here, Clifton, was founded about 1874 by the Littlefield and Bliss families and named for the surrounding cliffs. Short on water, settlers moved about a mile and a half upstream around 1877 and renamed the town for Latter-day Saint leader George Q. Cannon.

Completion of the East Fork canal in 1892 brought reliable irrigation to the valley, and Cannonville was incorporated in 1934.