Inventing New England: Regional Tourism in the Nineteenth Century

by Dona Brown

Quaint, charming, nostalgic New rustic fishing villages, romantic seaside cottages, breathtaking mountain vistas, peaceful rural settings. In Inventing New England , Dona Brown traces the creation of these calendar-page images and describes how tourism as a business emerged and came to shape the landscape, economy, and culture of a region.

By the latter nineteenth century, Brown argues, tourism had become an integral part of New England's rural economy, and the short vacation a fixture of middle-class life. Focusing on such meccas as the White Mountains, Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, coastal Maine, and Vermont, Brown describes how failed port cities, abandoned farms, and even scenery were churned through powerful marketing engines promoting nostalgia. She also examines the irony of an industry that was based on an escape from commerce but served as an engine of industrial development, spawning hotel construction, land speculation, the spread of wage labor, and a vast market for guidebooks and other publications.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, 19th Century

264 pages, Paperback

First published March 17, 1995

Reviews

[Mary Catelli · Rating 4 out of 5]

First tourism in America was the American grand tour, which consisted of cities, cities, cities. Church services, jails, legislatures in session -- those were the sights. But the fashionable tour started to take in the scenery, like Niagara. Some of it was sublime, some of the wilderness was picturesque, but "beautiful" remained the pleasant farmland on the sides of the river, serene and orderly and settled. One tourist said that the trees were not so worthwhile because in England, they would indicate a substantial landowner had them planted; here in America, they just grew even when people didn't own much property.

The White Mountains were the first area to be sought out for wild scenery, when it was still deemed necessary for romantic and poetical associations to make a landscape effective. People went out of their way to manufacture such associations; they even openly called for people to do so. Though colonial and Indian associations were beginning to be enough, plus romantic names for sights. The Old Man of the Mountain and its significance. And how the scenery declined as the great hotels came to be the great attraction.

Martha's Vineyard, which first of all became the location for a Methodist revival every summer. First they lived in communal tents, then some had private tents, then some built cottages -- and it metamorphosed into a place for a wholesome vacation -- not Newport, and that in more than the price involved. How cottages and business spread out from the camp.

Nantucket, declining sharply from its glory days of the whaling business, became the go-to location for nostalgia and stout old New England virtues. Which is curious on account of its having actually been a place of money and urban living. Nevertheless it was maintained, and their sea-going nature also explained the island's decline: obviously so restless a people would not stick around in one place. On the other hand, the island was perhaps more valued for the native characters than the native character; oddities soon got more play than virtue.

"Old Home Week" in upper New England was a deliberate ploy to invoke all sorts of old-fashioned rural virtues and coming home. Which led to a big business in having people spend their summer vacations on farms, for fresh air and good farm cooking. There were lots of articles instructing farm women on how to cook good farm cooking, because they expected a lot of fresh vegetables and a variety, eggs, milk -- and not the actual fat-high food that the farmers actually ate.

Maine with its resorts and its social classes and the colonial heritage and all that brought about with questions of ancestry. The adventures of trying to do new stuff in a place with the reputation for oldness.

The epilogue touches on the twentieth century and the way the automobile killed the massive tourist hotels for wide spread amenities, and brought, for instance, tourism to Cape Cod.

[Kristi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is fantastic examination of middle class New England tourism in the 19th century, beginning with fashionable scenic tourism through nostalgic reform-minded Colonial Revival. Brown's study focuses on the socio-economic motivations of both visitors and natives that fueled New England tourist industries during this period.

[Janet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Deep Exploration of How Quaint New England Came to Be

Loved this look at how the notion of New England as "old" was created. A whole new understanding of the tourism industry for me.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have been reading this book forever as I've been carrying it around in my briefcase. that aside, it was a fascinating and informative look at what we take for granted as feeling "New England"