See America First Making Tourism National

See America First Tourism has an influence on nationalism and national identity from the late nineteenth century through the interwar years. “National tourism," was a new form of leisure. Relying on national transportation and communications networks national market for goods and services a capitalist middle class with disposable income National Tourism “extended from and depended on the infrastructure of the modern nation-state.”

The influence of Tourism Tourism promoted as a ritual of American citizenship. Mapped an idealized (naturalized) American history and tradition across the American landscape, Defining an organic nationalism that linked national identity to a shared territory and history. Tourism then is as central to the development of a national culture as the impact of industrialization, urbanization, immigration, and other fragmenting forces problematized earlier assumptions about American life.

The role of Corporations In particular, railroads such as the Northern Pacific, Santa Fe, and Great Northern sought to gain passengers by promoting as tourist destinations natural wonders like Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks, and the Grand Canyon. Through publicity, the provision of tours and services, and the construction of hotels, railroads sought to define a canon of national tourist sites.

El Tovar Lobby, Grand Canyon

Montana. Glacier Park & Many Glacier Hotel

Open campfire in lobby, Glacier Park Hotel

The Wawona tree, Maraposo [i.e. Mariposa] Grove 1897

Panama-Pacific Exposition 1915

Roundtable in El Portal for the Yosemite spur line

America First Re-contextualized the tourist experience as not being European- derived. Early buildings employed Chateauesque, Second Empire, or Gothic motifs. These referential styles are replaced with a naturalized hotel environment of Native American, and Hispanic references.

The National Park System The National Park Service, began portraying the national parks as national assets during the 1920s. Partaking of the larger Americanization campaign Progressive theories of education