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Daily Class OutlineDaily Class QuestionsDaily Class Web LinksDaily Class Notes

 

Question for Discussion: How does the Tourist
Industry affect the Western economy and help
re-shape the Western myth?

Readings: Limerick, "Seeing and Being Seen";
Wroebel, "The Toured Upon," Rothman, "Shedding Skin" ; Robbins, "Greenlock"

Video: West Class National Parks: Yellowstone
Grand Teton, Rocky Mountain , and Yosemite, DVD ;
Western National Parks, DVD ; Arid Southwest DVD:
Pine Beetle

Daily Class Web Links

Studying Tourism in the West

Tourism in the West

Daily Class Outline



Daily Class Questions

 

 



Daily Class Notes

Western Tourism as New West Industry

"The central question of Western tourism: Given the instability and even decline of the conventional, rural Western enterprises, given the economic troubles afflicting mining, logging, ranching, and farming, does not the lession of history point in the direction of tourism?

"If one looks for a different, and more reliable, kind of foundation, all roads seem to lead to tourism, to the preservation and publicizing of local natural and cultural resources, as a permanent attraction for visitors with deep pockets. Here, the theory goes, is the clean industry, the sustainable industry. "(51)
......Patty Limerick

"Is Western Tourism subject to the same cycles of Boom and Bust as other Western extractive industries such as mining, ranching, logging, and farming."
......Chris Lewis

"But I still feel an exhilaration when I get into the jeep and drive out of Denver into the landscape that, for me continues to hold the magic and meaning of the American West. Maybe it is because I spend so much time getting there that I find the vistas so important."
.....James Carrier

"But the tourist trappers had become used to the sound of the cash register; they had tasted blood, and nothing would stop them from continuing the charade."
....Robert Athearn

"Tourism is the future of the West."
.....Hal Rothman

1964 Wilderness Act: Definition of Wilderness

DEFINITION OF WILDERNESS (c) A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain. An area of wilderness is further defined to mean in this chapter an area of undeveloped Federal land retaining its primeval character and influence, without permanent improvements or human habitation, which is protected and managed so as to preserve its natural conditions and which (1) generally appears to have been affected primarily by the forces of nature, with the imprint of man's work substantially unnoticeable; (2) has outstanding opportunities for solitude or a primitive and unconfined type of recreation; (3) has at least five thousand acres of land or is of sufficient size as to make practicable its preservation and use in an unimpaired condition; and (4) may also contain ecological, geological, or other features of scientific, educational, scenic, or historical value.

The Current Size of the Wilderness System

National Wilderness Preservation System

The Wilderness system in the United States continues to grow every year from the original 9.1 million acres. Current figures show the size to be 105,772,197 acres. Alaska contains 58,182,216 of the total acres, which is about 56%. 4.4% of the continental United States is protected as Wilderness. For a complete breakdown of Wilderness acres by agency,
click here

Resettling the West

Throughout the inland west, "amenity counties," as economist Thomas Michael Power of Montana University calls communities like Taos, places with attractive landscapes, clean air and water, and culturally significant communities, have experienced "economic vitality." According to Power in "Seeing and Being Seen: Tourism in the American West," in most communities "it is not tourism that is leading the change but growing populations of permanent residents, not just temporary visitors, that provide the core of those economies."

Limerick, Seeing and Being Seen

"I open with this story because I believe that scholars writing about western tourism can be tempted to adopt the point of view of the locals, to see the tourist from the outside, to cast the tourist as an alien, even contemptible, other. In thinking about tourism one runs a constant risk of casting the tourists themselves as boorish, invasive, repellent, and insensitive." (40)

"Thus I was in childhood both the touring and the toured upon, both the subject doing the seeing and the object being seen. If we take tourism to be an example of the sin of snoopishness, as it appears in some of the critical literature, then I was indeed both sinned against and sinning." (41)

"My vivid memories of how a motel maid's back feels at the end of the day prevent me from celebrating the fine economic opportunities of a regional shift to tourism. On the other side, I remember too clearly my pleasure in watching Indian dances in northern Arizona, or in watching waves crash on Southern California beaches, to damn tourists as a kind of invasive infection, spreading the viruses and microbes of inauthenticity and commodification. Forty years ago, when I put on the uniform of the cowgirl, I gave up my claim to purity and authenticity. (42)

"We form a larger subculture than we realize, those of us who were raised, supported, formed, and informed by western tourism. If there is accuracy in the predictions that tourism will prove to be the principal industry in many areas of the West, this is a subculture that is going to grow and grow. But where did we come from, or, more precisely, where did western tourism come from?" (43)

"To my mind, the unsettled issues of conquest did not disappear, even if tourists could not see them. But I can get a glimpse of why other historians might think that the flood of tourists into the West provided the clearest and most dramatic statement: the war was over; white people had won; the West was subdued; the West was an occupied terrain, and the tourists were the army of occupation." (45)

"With the gradual shift away from the railroad and toward the automobile as the vehicle of tourism, the flood of tourists only broadened and deepened. For the first two decades of the twentieth century, the automobile remained primarily an additional toy for the vacationing rich. But by the 1920s, the automobile was serving as the agent for the democratization of tourism, for the redefinition of western tourism as a mass experience." (46)

"The national parks have long represented the best documented case of the puzzles and paradoxes of tourism. From the beginnings of the National Park Service in 1916, its officials knew that they had to sell the parks. Unless they could get significant numbers of
Americans to visit the parks, the parks would be without a political constituency. And so the Park Service was placed, from the beginning, at the sharp edge of the divide between the goals of "providing for the enjoyment" of the parks and preserving the parks, in some more or less intact form, for "future generations." 7 (48-49)

"Here is the central question of western tourism, past and present. Given the instability and even decline of the conventional, rural western enterprises, given the economic troubles afflicting mining, logging, ranching, and farming, does not the lesson of history point in the direction of tourism? The lesson of western history is that extractive industries have provided a treacherous foundation for permanent and stable communities. If one looks for a different, and more reliable, kind of foundation, all roads seem to lead to tourism, to the preservation and publicizing of local natural and cultural resources, as a permanent attraction for visitors with deep pockets. Here, the theory goes, is the clean industry, the sustainable industry. "(51)

"Whether one calls it the end of the frontier or not, some sort of major shift is indeed under way in the American West today. The rural extractive industries are undeniably on the ropes. The only question is whether they have one or two more rides left on the boom/bust roller coaster, or whether the whole ride is over. Under those circumstances, it is hard to find economic options other than tourism. In tourism's third-world labor arrangements, in its often terrible disparity between rich and poor in places like Aspen, in its various environmental impacts from sewage to air pollution, and in its ongoing vulnerability to the swings of the American economy, tourism may be an unappealing alternative to mining, logging, ranching, and farming. But what else is there?" (51)

"I would like to believe that there are better ways to do tourism, ways that give greater respect to the dignity of the toured upon -- or, probably more important, that give greater wages to the toured upon. I would like to believe that at the heart of tourism is a very understandable human curiosity, a sym­ pathetic impulse to go beyond the limits of one's own familiar world, and to see and to learn about new places and new people. I would like to believe that this curiosity is not intrinsically damaging and degrading." (52)

"I am willing to go pretty far in asking for a reconsideration of tourism, and for a reconsideration of our usual portrait of the
tourist as a bumbling, contemptible, invasive other. But I recognize that, even with this reconsideration, what tourists want from western history and what historians are willing to give them may be fundamentally at odds. This is a struggle not likely to dissolve in friendly, reciprocal empathy and understanding." (56)

"I end with this story to counteract any tendency toward the suspension of critical judgment that I may have shown in this essay. This image of a chained child, with a blanket placed over the chain to make the picture pretty, is part of the heritage of western tourism. As we examine the rising influence of tourism in the western economy, we return to pay attention to that chain." (57)

Wroebel, The Toured Upon

"In the field of western American history, the most studied of the three broad elements under discussion here--- tourists, tourism , and the toured upon--is probably the last. Scholars of the West have become increasingly interested in the impact of tourists and the tourism industry on the environments and communities that are visited."(17)

"The grand landscapes and diverse inhabitants of the American West today draw visitors in huge numbers. The national parks (most of which are located in the West), for example, annually attract a total visitor population roughly equal in size to the population of the nation itself." (18)

"Residents and visitors have viewed the West as a place of adventure and excitement, refuge and restoration, for more than two centuries now. The West's "frontier heritage"--that is, the multitudinous mythologized versions of its past--constitutes, like the heritage of any region, a sanitized, simplified version of a messier, more ambiguous history. It is that sanitized mode of representation that provides the stock symbols of western tourism -- the quaint false-front buildings of old western towns, or the ubiquitous cowboy and Indian and pioneer iconography. It is not essential that the symbols bear any definite connection to the historical realities of an actual western locale for the promotion of place to be successful. 65" (19)

"The West has been viewed by European-Americans through mythic lenses for centuries; the presumed inauthenticity of tourist communities is actually part of this much longer tradition. The "West of the Imagination" has departed cavalierly from the complexities and ambiguities of the region's past to present its presumed "essence," and western tourism has followed suit. 67 That mythic heritage has generated a great deal of income for some western residents and, in most cases, more for outside corporations." (19)

"As historian Bonnie Christensen notes in her study of Red Lodge, Montana , residents "played with the past" in response to touristic opportunities in the present. In the space of a few decades the town had "miners dressed up like cowboys, miners dressed up like Italian immigrants, cowboys wrestling steers from speeding cars, cowboys who were really Indians (and vice versa) and trout dumped from airplanes to make nature more `natural." One suspects that Red Lodge is typical of many western towns in its evolving processes of heritage creation."

"And in representing a past wrapped in multiple layers of mythology, you can get away with a great deal in the West, and qualms over inauthenticity are unlikely to act as much of a brake on the process. Still, it is important to note that many other western towns have not "played with the past" so frivolously; indeed, many have developed very thoughtful and historically accurate community heritage tourism plans, driven by a desire for authentic representation of the past. "

"Some communities have been able, to some degree, to set the terms of tourism and reap significant benefits. Others have seen their homes turned into theme parks, where big-spending outsiders inflate local prices and locals in some measure sacrifice their cultural integrity to meet outsiders' high standards for proper quaintness . 7 Many westerners have themselves been instrumental in transforming their landscapes and sometimes their customs, in a form of "playing to the camera," to meet the expectations of tourists." 71

"Carey McWilliams issued a warning to the West that those states in which the tourist trade was the most important income producer "are economically vulnerable, puppets of forces which they find it difficult to influence or control." 73 We can point to the growth of low -wage service economies in tourist towns such as Aspen, Colorado, and view the workers as a later generation of colonial servants to imperial guests, servants who often cannot afford to live in the communities where they work. 74 We can envision a process in which cultural integrity dissolves as western communities prepare themselves for the process of being seen by their "other," the tourists. Or we can emphasize a range of positive outcomes from well-managed, locally directed, and locally owned tourist operations. We can highlight cases in which western communities have engaged in cultural heritage tourism and become more cognizant of their own community heritages and perhaps developed deeper, more cohesive community consciousnesses as a result."

"Tourism, like "work," is a part of everyday life in much of the modern West, and we need to move beyond the "visited as victims" model in studying the "toured upon," just as we need to move beyond the authenticity-artificiality paradigm in studying tourists."

"Should communities that consciously promote tourism be so adamant in expressing the sentiment that visiting is okay, but staying (establishing residency) is unwelcome? Do the oft-recounted stupid-tourist stories tell as much about the locals as the visitors--or more? Are tourists' perceptions of residents as "other" matched sometimes in their cultural arrogance by resident perceptions of tourists as "other"?"

Rothman, Shedding Skin and Shifting Shape

"Tourism is a devil's bargain, not only in the twentieth-century American West, but throughout the nation and the world. Despite its reputation as a panacea for the economic ills of places that have lost their way in the post-industrial world or for those that never previously found it, tourism typically fails to meet the expectations of communities and regions that embrace it as an economic strategy. Regions, communities, and locales welcome tourism as an economic boon, only to find that it irrevocably changes them in unanticipated and uncontrollable ways." (100)

"The embrace of tourism triggers an all-encompassing contest for the soul of a place. As amorphous as this concept is, it holds one piece of the core of the devil's bargain of tourism as a form of living. All places, even untrammeled prairies or rugged deserts, have identities; people see and define them, they have intrinsic characteristics, and they welcome or repel as much based on people's definitions of them as on their innate characteristics. Human-shaped places, cities and national parks, marinas and farms, closely guard their identities, their people located within these constructions in ways that give them not only national, regional, and local affiliation but also a powerful sense of self and place in the world." (101)

"In this sense, tourism is the most colonial of colonial economies, not because of the sheer physical difficulty or the pain or humiliation intrinsic in its labor, but as a result of its psychic and social impact on people and their places. Tourism, and the social structure it provides, makes unknowing locals into people who look like themselves but who act and behave differently as they learn to market their place and its, and their, identity."

"Unlike laborers in these colonial enterprises, who lived in obscurity as they labored, tourist workers face an enormous contradiction: who and what they are is crucial to visitors in the abstract; who they are as service workers is entirely meaningless. Tourist workers quickly learn that one of the most essential traits of tourist service is to mirror onto the guest what that visitor wants from you and your place in a way that affirms the visitor's self-image."

"Tourism offers its visitors romanticized visions of the historic past, the natural world, popular culture, and especially of themselves. The sale of these messages, even in their least trammeled form, is what iconoclastic author Edward Abbey called "industrial tourism," the packaging and marketing of experience as commodity within the boundaries of the accepted level of convenience to the public."4

"For Americans, the geographic and cultural landscapes of a mythic American West hold these psychic trophies. The West is the location of the American creation myth, the national story, the figurative hole in the earth from which Pueblo Indian people emerged in their story of the beginning of the world. The image of the West, especially in the conquest that occurred between 1848 and 1890, serves that same mythic purpose for Americans. The Revolutionary War has distant meaning, but in the late twentieth century, the West holds mythic sway."

"The revised national creation myth gave the West primacy in American life and thinking that grew from innocence and the potential for re-invention, a cachet that further marked the region's importance in a post-industrial world that increasingly depends on tourism. When Americans paid homage to their national and nationalistic roots, they did not look to Indepen­ dence Hall; they went west as they believed their forefathers did, to find self and create society, to build anew from the detritus of the old. This need for redefinition explains the historic and modern fixation with the West in the United States and even in Europe . "

"Tourism turns place and people into something different, but few can do without its benefits. It brings new neighbors, who often do not share existing values, but those newcomers are a source of prosperity. In the West, tourism encourages the marketing of something different than the beef grazed on local grass, the timber in nearby forests, or the riches buried deep in the ground....In tourism, the very identity of place becomes its economic sustenance, and in that transformation is a complicated and paradoxical situation for the people of a place."

"This is the core of the complicated devil's bargain that is twentieth-century tourism in the American West. Success creates the seeds of its own destruction as more and more people seek the experience of an "authentic" place transformed to seem more "authentic." In search of "lifestyle" instead of life, these seekers of identity and amenity transform what they touch beyond recognition. Things that look the same are not the same; actions that are the same acquire different meaning. "

"Tourism complicates; it defines and redefines life after industrialization. It is different yet the same. Western tourism sells us what we are, what we as a nation of individuals need to validate ourselves, to make us what we want to be. In that process, we as tourists change all that we encounter. Making us what we want to be means shaping other places and people along with ourselves. This is the fault line of tourism, its Grand Canyon ."

Robbins, Greenlock

"As with most of the West, the railroad was the biggest agent of change for the Grand Canyon. Tracks were laid in 1882, and tourists, ranchers and other would-be boomers rolled west. "

"In 1991, roughly four million people streamed through the entrance station into the Grand Canyon National Park. Ten years earlier, that number was 2.6 million. The number of visitors to all the parks has doubled in the last twenty-five years, to 267 million. [ It is now over
300 million in 2006.] Thirty thousand people a day funnel through the small, congested area at the South Rim of the canyon in the summer. On a good day in the summer, traffic crawls; on a bad day, it doesn't seem to move at all. Parking is a nightmare, and the sound of idling engines and sour smell of blue diesel smoke from tour buses hangs in the air. "

"Once upon a time the national parks and wilderness areas were a world away from the cities, a natural paradise with breath-stealing views and absolute peace and quiet where people went to get away from it all. Now people are bringing the cities with them, and the problems associated with crowding are legion. From Yellowstone to Glacier, from Rocky Mountain National Park to the Grand Canyon, from Oregon's Three Sisters Wilderness Area to Colorado's Mesa Verde National Monument, America's premier natural areas are, say biologists, park managers and other scientists, overrun with people, automobiles and other trappings of civilization, overrun to the breaking point. Species are being lost, resources are being damaged, and the things that make America's wild lands wild are receding. Some call it "greenlock."

"The problem of greenlock is especially dramatic at the Grand Canyon , one of the most famous parks in the world and one of the most heavily visited. It is located in the northwest corner of Arizona , not far from either Utah or Nevada ."


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