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Sacred Places: American Tourist Attractions in the Nineteenth Century
Tourism emerged as an important cultural activity in the United States in the 1820s as steamboats and canals allowed for greater mobility and the nation's writers and artists focused their attention on American scenery. From the 1820s until well after the Civil War, American artists, like Thomas Cole and Frederic Church, depicted American tourist attractions in their work, and often made their reputations on those paintings. Writers like Irving, Cooper, Hawthorne, and James described their visits to the same attractions or incorporated them into their fiction. The work of these artists and writers conferred value on the scenes represented and helped shape the vision of the tourists who visited them. This interest in scenery permeated the work of both serious and popular writers and artists, and they produced thousands of images and descriptions of America's tourist attractions for the numerous guidebooks, magazines, and other publications devoted to travel in the United States during the period.
Drawing on this fascinating body of material, Sacred Places examines the vital role which tourism played in fulfilling the cultural needs of nineteenth-century Americans. America was a new country in search of a national identity. Educated Americans desperately wished to meet European standards of culture and, at the same time, to develop a distinctly American literature and art. Tourism offered a means of defining America as a place and taking pride in the special features of its landscape. The country's magnificent natural wonders were a substitute for the cathedrals and monuments, the sense of history that Europe had built over the centuries. Moreover, Sears argues, tourist attractions like Mammoth Cave, Mount Auburn Cemetery, Yosemite, and Yellowstone functioned as sacred places for a nation with a diversity of religious sects and without ancient religious and national shrines. For nineteenth-century Americans, whose vision was shaped by the aesthetics of the sublime and the picturesque and by the popular nineteenth-century Romantic view of nature as temple, such places fulfilled their urgent need for cultural monuments and for places to visit which transcended ordinary reality.
But these nineteenth-century tourist attractions were also arenas of consumption. Niagara Falls was the most sublime of God's creations, a sacred place, which, like Mount Auburn Cemetery, was supposed to have a profound moral effect on the spectator. But it was also an emporium of culture where the tourist shopped for Niagara's wonders and for little replicas of the Falls in the form of souvenirs. In Sacred Places, Sears describes how this strange, sometimes amusing, juxtaposition of the mythic and the trivial, the sacred and the profane, the spiritual and the commercial remained a significant feature of American tourist attractions even after efforts were made at Yosemite, Yellowstone, and Niagara Falls to curb commercial and industrial intrusions.
Sears also explores how the nineteenth-century idealization of home stimulated the tourists' response to such places as the Willey House in the White Mountains, the rural cemeteries, and even the newly established asylums for the deaf, dumb, blind, and insane. And, in an intriguing account of Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania, he examines the reasons why an important nineteenth-century anthracite transportation center was also a major tourist attraction.
Most of the attractions discussed in this book are still visited by millions of Americans. By illuminating their cultural meaning, Sacred Places prompts us to reflect on our own motivations and responses as tourists and reveals why tourism was and still is such an important part of American life.
Drawing on this fascinating body of material, Sacred Places examines the vital role which tourism played in fulfilling the cultural needs of nineteenth-century Americans. America was a new country in search of a national identity. Educated Americans desperately wished to meet European standards of culture and, at the same time, to develop a distinctly American literature and art. Tourism offered a means of defining America as a place and taking pride in the special features of its landscape. The country's magnificent natural wonders were a substitute for the cathedrals and monuments, the sense of history that Europe had built over the centuries. Moreover, Sears argues, tourist attractions like Mammoth Cave, Mount Auburn Cemetery, Yosemite, and Yellowstone functioned as sacred places for a nation with a diversity of religious sects and without ancient religious and national shrines. For nineteenth-century Americans, whose vision was shaped by the aesthetics of the sublime and the picturesque and by the popular nineteenth-century Romantic view of nature as temple, such places fulfilled their urgent need for cultural monuments and for places to visit which transcended ordinary reality.
But these nineteenth-century tourist attractions were also arenas of consumption. Niagara Falls was the most sublime of God's creations, a sacred place, which, like Mount Auburn Cemetery, was supposed to have a profound moral effect on the spectator. But it was also an emporium of culture where the tourist shopped for Niagara's wonders and for little replicas of the Falls in the form of souvenirs. In Sacred Places, Sears describes how this strange, sometimes amusing, juxtaposition of the mythic and the trivial, the sacred and the profane, the spiritual and the commercial remained a significant feature of American tourist attractions even after efforts were made at Yosemite, Yellowstone, and Niagara Falls to curb commercial and industrial intrusions.
Sears also explores how the nineteenth-century idealization of home stimulated the tourists' response to such places as the Willey House in the White Mountains, the rural cemeteries, and even the newly established asylums for the deaf, dumb, blind, and insane. And, in an intriguing account of Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania, he examines the reasons why an important nineteenth-century anthracite transportation center was also a major tourist attraction.
Most of the attractions discussed in this book are still visited by millions of Americans. By illuminating their cultural meaning, Sacred Places prompts us to reflect on our own motivations and responses as tourists and reveals why tourism was and still is such an important part of American life.
243 pages, Paperback
First published August 17, 1989
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 18, 2014
In the so-called New World there was no Rome or Jerusalem to set forth toward on a pilgrimage. We have no grand cathedrals. So in this author’s view, we created our own “Sacred Places.” What raw material did we have to work with. Scenery and stunning landscape. Sears describes the reverence which 19th century intellectuals, artists and tourists bestowed upon that era’s emerging tourist attractions. They were Niagara Falls, the Hudson and Connecticut Valleys, Mammoth Cave, the White Mountains, Yosemite and Yellowstone. He does not cover the resorts that were not based on scenic wonders. No one, for example, has probably ever associated Atlantic City with any level of sacredness.
One of the strengths of Sears’ book is that at least for a few of the resorts he gives a very good impression of what it must have been like to visit in the 19th century. This is particularly true of the chapters on Mammoth Cave in Kentucky and the early years of Yellowstone National Park. I also ws interested in his description of how commercial interests, shops, sideshows and circus entertainment, began to overrun Niagara even at this early stage.
This is not as comprehensive a source as either “Working at Play” or “See America First.” But it’s well written and an easy read. There is one chapter that seems incongruous about prisons, asylums and institutions for the physically disadvantaged. Apparently these were also tourist attractions in the 1800’s. Strange times.
One of the strengths of Sears’ book is that at least for a few of the resorts he gives a very good impression of what it must have been like to visit in the 19th century. This is particularly true of the chapters on Mammoth Cave in Kentucky and the early years of Yellowstone National Park. I also ws interested in his description of how commercial interests, shops, sideshows and circus entertainment, began to overrun Niagara even at this early stage.
This is not as comprehensive a source as either “Working at Play” or “See America First.” But it’s well written and an easy read. There is one chapter that seems incongruous about prisons, asylums and institutions for the physically disadvantaged. Apparently these were also tourist attractions in the 1800’s. Strange times.
June 22, 2013
The adventures of creating tourist traps. Niagara and the Mammoth Caves were big early ones because they were striking and unique; you couldn't get that in Europe. To be gloried in for their sublime and religious inspiration.
Not that that was always an advantage. Proper scenery was invested with stories and poetry. The Hudson and the Connecticut were big on the American Grand Tour because they were cultivated along most of their length, which is what proper scenery looked like. Washington Irving rewrote some German legends to create "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle," to intentionally invest the Catskills with the proper sorts of "charms of storied and poetical association." The scene of a disaster in the White Mountains, the Willey House, also provided some of the stories people expected.
Asylums and prisons were considered, briefly, a place to visit, until it became clear that the reformed institutions were not going to create new men out of their inmates. And the first people to move to the suburbs were the dead, with the new rural cemeteries -- which reflected a new attitude in religion, unlike the Calvinist terror of overconfidence, a hope in heaven -- which could be overconfident, and certainly allowed displays of luxury. They were great tourist attractions. Parks were first created in part to give people green places where they could have their recreation without doing it over graves. And handy to the city, which would no doubt morally improve its residents.
But Ruskins and others also changed the view of wilderness, which is one reason why Yosemite was saved as a national park. With much ado about its sublimity. (Though one man complained of a famous painter that he painted the mountains too skinny and tall -- they would blow over in a good breeze.) It was developed from the first as a tourist attraction.
As was Yellowstone, which tended to inspire more infernal than celestial thoughts, but others about the wonders of nature. Niagara got rather cleaned up, to prevent the clutter that had been allowed to encroach, and he discusses more touristy locations thereafter.
Not that that was always an advantage. Proper scenery was invested with stories and poetry. The Hudson and the Connecticut were big on the American Grand Tour because they were cultivated along most of their length, which is what proper scenery looked like. Washington Irving rewrote some German legends to create "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle," to intentionally invest the Catskills with the proper sorts of "charms of storied and poetical association." The scene of a disaster in the White Mountains, the Willey House, also provided some of the stories people expected.
Asylums and prisons were considered, briefly, a place to visit, until it became clear that the reformed institutions were not going to create new men out of their inmates. And the first people to move to the suburbs were the dead, with the new rural cemeteries -- which reflected a new attitude in religion, unlike the Calvinist terror of overconfidence, a hope in heaven -- which could be overconfident, and certainly allowed displays of luxury. They were great tourist attractions. Parks were first created in part to give people green places where they could have their recreation without doing it over graves. And handy to the city, which would no doubt morally improve its residents.
But Ruskins and others also changed the view of wilderness, which is one reason why Yosemite was saved as a national park. With much ado about its sublimity. (Though one man complained of a famous painter that he painted the mountains too skinny and tall -- they would blow over in a good breeze.) It was developed from the first as a tourist attraction.
As was Yellowstone, which tended to inspire more infernal than celestial thoughts, but others about the wonders of nature. Niagara got rather cleaned up, to prevent the clutter that had been allowed to encroach, and he discusses more touristy locations thereafter.
May 29, 2015
Sears argues that 19th century American tourist attractions tended to be secular places sanctified by natural sublimity and nationalistic idealism in which the nation was symbolized by natural grandeur or American ingenuity. This history is extremely easy and enjoyable to read, as well as academically well-informed and researched. It does, however, present a very limited view of American tourism, focusing only on sublime landscapes, with only passing mention of resorts and a complete lack of awareness of 19th century historical site tourism.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews