Where Was Jeremiah Johnson Filmed?

"Jeremiah Johnson" director Sydney Pollack and the film's crew made a good choice in picking around 100 locations around Arizona and Utah to shoot the movie in the early 1970s (via The Cinemaholic). According to an archived report on the filming locations from Desert News in 2013, the movie was primarily filmed in Utah. Specific locations listed in the Desert News report include Zion National Park, Alpine Loop and Mt. Timpanogos, Leeds, Snow Canyon, St. George, Sundance, Uinta National Forest, Ashley National Forest, and Wasatch-Cache National Forest. With its many national parks and forests, Utah had an abundance of places that still felt like the wild and untamed landscape of the American frontier.

In a 1973 interview with The Harvard Crimson, Pollack reflected on how difficult the winter weather of the Rockies resulted in production difficulties. "Up in the mountain, in the scenes with new snow, you couldn't have the actor's tracks in the shot. You'd have to take a snowmobile, move the actor into [the] thicket by some back way, and call him on a two-way radio to come out," the director said.

Other scenes were filmed in the middle of heavy snowstorms or had to be set up in the wee hours of the morning and filmed in as little as one take. In spite (or perhaps because) of these weather-related difficulties, however, "Jeremiah Johnson" carries an authenticity to it that sells the drama. Because of that, it remains a notable entry in Western cinema.