By the early 1890's, visitation to both Yosemite and Yellowstone had increased
steadily each year, but the numbers reflected the limited tourist market the railroads had targeted.
Only the wealthy could afford the passage, and many of them were more interested in
visits to urbane San Francisco, lavish Monterey, or nouveau riche Los Angeles. By
1890, no new parks had been nominated or preserved, and it seemed that they were a
phase of the past until new cultural trends and national concerns as well as the changes in America's
economy and population presented new opportunities and needs for the railroads. The tourist in the 1870's
was first targeted as a potential investor and settler, but in the 90's the tourist was simply a visitor who
needed to be persuaded to ride the rails west year after year for vacations. Even though the urgency of
attracting investors had subsided, the railroads had invested in park accommodations and passenger
equipment. The structures for tourism were in place, and the railroads began a mass-marketing strategy
that appealed to a much wider market of tourists than the elite investors of the 1870's.
The Northern Pacific "Fair On Wheels," 1883
The American west had changed in the twenty years since the railroads had entered
the unsettled wilderness beyond the Rockies. By this time, the West
was not nearly as wild as it once had been, and vestiges of the old west vanished rapidly
in the flurry of new settlement. As early as the mid 1880's, Northern Pacific engaged in active marketing
strategies to demonstrate that the West had come of age and that the badlands of the North had at last
bent to the will of the plow. In 1883 an exhibition car called the "Fair on Wheels" (photo above) made
its way from Minnesota throughout the East to display minerals, timber, and specially
made stuffed animals representative of Yellowstone's species along with fruits, grains,
and potted plants indicative of the bountiful harvests of the old Northwest--all made
possible by the railroad. Over 400,000 people visited the car and took away promotional
literature about the "Yellowstone Park Line," its hotels at Mammoth Springs and
Old Faithful, and the names of the nearest ticket agents.
Throughout the 80's, Northern Pacific circulated travel brochures in the East that
promised the best of both worlds--an "authentic" wild west experience in a wilderness
made safe, prosperous, and civilized by the railroad. Although the railroad estimated a distribution of 2
million pieces of promotional literature about Yellowstone, visitation to the railroad car was considerably
higher than visitation to the park, which averaged only about 500 per season, largely because of the
tremendous expense of travel West. Still, the "Fair on Wheels" stunt indicated to the railroad that there
was enough public interest in the West to consider opening travel to a mass market in the near future.
As Northern and Southern Pacific made payments on their outstanding debts and enjoyed economic
success in the freight business, it was time to reconsider the parks. They had invested millions in
construction, passenger cars, and advertising, and now that the search for investors had slowed, something
had to be done to stimulate interest in travel to the parks. Again, the railroads were able to take advantage
of America's fascination with the West to increase tourism on a mass scale. In 1890, the Census reported
that there was no longer a distinguishable frontier line in the United States, and settlement spread from
coast to coast. This pronouncement had an uncertain but uneasy effect on Americans. After more than 250
years of an ever-present wilderness which existed beyond a settled point of civilization,
Americans faced at last the realization of the nation's "manifest destiny" to spread from Atlantic to Pacific.
Although the importance of this event would not be analyzed until Frederick Jackson Turner presented his
speech `The Significance of the Frontier in American History" at the World's Columbian Exposition in
1893, many Americans understood that the country had reached a landmark in its development. Coupled
with the rise of the urban East and the manufactured detritus of industrialization which polluted the
cityscapes and encroached upon the surrounding countrysides, it seemed as though the
announcement of the Census suggested the loss of a significant portion of
America's cultural identity. The same Census report also indicated a depleting amount of
timber and arable lands in the public domain, adding the insult of declining material
resources to the injury of a vanishing cultural resource. The thought that the American
wilderness--and the American identity by implication--were in jeopardy spurred a cultural
revolution of sorts which embraced the preservation of nature in order to protect
American history and prosperity. In 1890, President Harrison signed the Forest Reserve act to protect
remaining timber in the West, and Yosemite and the adjacent Sequoia groves won federal protection,
making it the nation's second National Park-thanks to a little help from Southern Pacific.
The proclamations of the 1890 census impacted popular attitudes toward
America's wilderness now that many felt it was vanishing, but American society had also
changed dramatically since the 1870's. Rampant industrialization rapidly overtook towns
and cities alike throughout the eastern part of the country. The infamous Tammany Hall
government of New York was representative of urban management in its neglect of city
maintenance and sanitation. Photographer Jacob Riis documented the decay of
New York's streets in publications like Harper's Weekly and exhibited his photos around
the country to dismayed audiences from Philadelphia to Chicago--all of whom recognized
a degree of Tammany neglect in their own cities. Images of the West, however, still
maintained the promising luster of virgin land. Photographs of the Western landscape circulated in the east
and provided the ideal alternative to the photos presented by
Riis. The East strained under the weight of industry and population, but the West was still
fresh, open, and new--or so the photographic dialogue between Western photographers and Riis
"Five Cents a Spot," Jacob Riis, c.1890
"Glacier Point Rock, 3201 ft. Yosemite Valley" Isaiah West Taber, 1886.
In addition to the census findings and the increasingly industrial East, the popular arts were inventing their
own versions of the West which were sold to a mass audience eager to buy them. Dime novels that told
adventurous tales of fiercely independent cowboy heroes, lawless bands of shooters and thieves, or
romances between cowhands and rancher's daughters created their own mythical visions of a wide-open
West that sounded more appealing than the decaying urban neighborhoods where many readers of these
books lived and worked. During the 1880's and 1890's, Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show toured the
country and brought similar visions of the West to the East and expressed them in the three dimensions of
the theater. The products of popular culture brought images and ideas of the West to the minds of the
masses just as the paintings of Moran and Bierstadt and stories in Harper's conveyed a vision of the
West to the elite audiences during the 1860's and 1870's. As increasingly romanticized notions of the
West emerged in the national consciousness through these other avenues, the railroads found a new way to
appeal to a mass market by selling a romanticized version of travel on the old frontier.
The railroads certainly did their part to
contribute to the popular notions of the romantic west. Northern Pacific distributed this
calendar, which featured Thomas Moran's 1892 version of The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone,
more evocative and painterly display of color and light than his more linear and much
more realistic 1872 rendition.
Southern Pacific began to
the protection of the Mariposa grove of sequoias. The age and size of the trees was proof of antiquity on
the American continent, but images
like this expressed the view that the East was for technology and advancement while the
West was a museum of our heritage
In 1893, the World's Columbian Exposition provided a mass
market audience to target for
visitation to the parks. Both Yosemite and Yellowstone were represented at the Fair, but
because Northern Pacific had easy rail access from Chicago to Yellowstone, the line took
advantage of the number of travelers already attending the fair and encouraged continued
travel west to Montana and Washington. Once tourists visited the spectacle of
technology and industry, they could ride the rails to the source of American
innovation and ingenuity and commune with the wilderness in the comfort and style
made possible by the railroad industry. In order to symbolize this "best of both worlds"
invention, the Northern Pacific adopted the Chinese yin-yang, symbol of the balanced
universe, as its logo. This choice not only suggested harmony between nature and
industry and wilderness and civilization, but it also reminded the public that Northern
Pacific had expedited the manifest destiny of America by building the transcontinental
link to the Orient, the fabled "Passage to India."
Southern Pacific engaged in similar promotion during this time, emphasizing its access to
perennially popular San Francisco and newly fashionable Los Angeles. Playing even
further to its niche-market of sophisticated travelers, Southern Pacific sponsored
the publication of Sunset, "the Magazine of Western Living," which was
a lifestyle magazine with decorating tips, garden advice, fashion updates, and
popular fiction set in the West which became one of the most ingenious marketing strategies employed by
the railroad. The magazine was distributed on both coasts, but Southern Pacific played down its role in the
publishing process enough to leave many readers unaware that they were subscribing to a railroad
publication despite the full-color ads for Southern Pacific's passenger routes sprinkled liberally throughout
each issue. After reading about the splendors of California, readers intrigued enough to visit the state knew
precisely how to get there.
Sunset offered proof that the west was civilized and that
achieved its destiny by bringing style and culture to the Pacific coast. California
glittered with the luster of a promised land in the pages of the magazine. It had the elite
culture, palatial hotels, and Epicurean delights of San Francisco; the sublime scenery of
the Yosemite; ports with access to the Orient; and even a land of deserts and orange
groves, proof enough for some that California was indeed the New Jerusalem.
Sunset enjoyed such widespread popularity that it is still published today,
although the Southern Pacific relinquished its rights to an independent publisher after the
company abandoned passenger service.
Theodore Roosevelt and John Muir at Glacier Point, Yosemite
Northern and Southern Pacific each adopted prominent spokesmen during the 1890's in order
to keep their companies and their parks in the limelight. Southern Pacific co-opted
John Muir as a chief publicist because of his passionate involvement with Yosemite, but Muir was a
reluctant accomplice. Muir's popularity with preservationists
and his well-known favor of an officially legislated system of protected wilderness provided Southern
free publicity and an opportunity to align itself with his beliefs to show the public
how important their association with Yosemite was in maintaining the valley's protection. Northern Pacific
associated itself to ardent sportsman Teddy Roosevelt in order to
capitalize on his outspoken pleas for more areas of federally protected wildlife and wilderness. Neither
Muir nor Roosevelt had any interest in building
an association with either railroad, but the railroads readily took advantage of the popularity of these two
men by echoing their opinions in new advertising strategies designed to advance their own interests in
targeting new tourist markets.
Muir, Yosemite's most celebrated resident and the park system's most
ardent defender, was writing and speaking often about the merits of preservation based on
on ecological values alone. He had criticized the "blank, fleshly apathy" of the class of tourist that visited
Yosemite in its
early years and loathed the passive and consumptive role played by wealthy visitors who
came to nature for nothing more than contemplation, conversation, and convalescence--a role encouraged
by Southern Pacific's advertisements (Pomeroy 52).
Muir was instrumental in winning National Park status for Yosemite in 1890, but he
conceded that "even the soulless Southern Pacific Railroad, never counted on for
anything good, helped nobly in pushing the bill for the park through Congress" (Runte TD 33).
Muir's deep ecological beliefs were far ahead of his time, but slow increases in visitation and burgeoning
interest in the West made the railroads as determined
as ever to protect these parks and seek new ones for protection. Although Muir was
opposed to the kind of tourism encouraged by the railroads, he understood that ecological
defenses for preservation would not win popular or congressional support. An unlikely but effective
alliance developed between Muir and Southern Pacific.
The railroads had the means to bring influential people to the parks,
and through high visitation and higher profits the railroads could demonstrate
the economic value of scenery. As the benefits from railroad profits created
more jobs and more resort areas, the preservation movement would gain a
strong defense for its cause.
The problems in the East and the promise of the West helped contribute to the rise of the
"Wilderness Cult," a trend which appealed to many who favored the outdoors and looked
to the "simpler, more ordered world of Mother Nature, where life adhered to nobler
principles" (Demars 46). Muir's famous
Sierra Club formed from a group of concerned
Californians who worked tirelessly during the park bill debates. Once Yosemite was
protected, the group became actively involved in interpretive visits to the park which
involved wildlife study, back-country hikes, and camping excursions. Wilderness groups
emerged East and West, motivated by a common belief that wild nature was the source of
abstract notions such as beauty and spiritual truth--qualities threatened by both the
utilitarian approach to nature as an economic resource and the Romantic tourist approach
to nature as an entity to conquer and imprint with the comforts of civilization. Shifts in
tourist approaches were slow to come, but throughout the 1890's, outdoor enthusiasts
entered Yosemite and Yellowstone as often as the high society tourist, and outdoor camps
were constructed opposite the plush hotels sponsored by the railroads. Tourism was
changing, and the railroads recognized the need to expand their market to include this
new breed of park visitor.
In 1896, Southern Pacific became the first railroad to accommodate the new tourist by
reducing fares enough to appeal to a middle-class clientele and even checking
camping equipment free of charge. Now, visitors from the East could haul tents,
cookstoves, and lanterns to Yosemite.
New camps were constructed with rough but pleasant accomodations, and all
visitors were encouraged to participate actively in wilderness adventures. Hiking, bird-
watching, boating, and overnight back-country excursions provided visitors with an
opportunity to experience the parks on a more ecological basis--at a price considerably
lower than the Pullman-to-hotel journey purchased by the wealthy. Despite the different emphasis of the
nature tourist, Muir's Sierra Club blended harmoniously with Yosemite's reputation of a
"civilized wilderness," and Southern Pacific was able to continue marketing the park as a
moving and nearly divine landscape even though experiences of Sierra Club participants
and Hutchings hotel guests were markedly different.
Northern Pacific took advantage of Theodore
Roosevelt's popularity as a wilderness advocate and turned him into the unofficial spokesman of
Roosevelt, contrary to Muir, was the rough-and-ready sportsman, an easterner
who remade himself into a pioneer after buying a ranch in the Dakota territory. Where
Muir espoused deep ecology and respect for leaving nature to its own devices, Roosevelt
was an avid hunter and explorer who shared only a love for wilderness and a respect for
preservation with Muir.
Roosevelt's "Boone and Crockett Club" appealed to others who shared interests in big
game hunting and forestry preservation. Although the club's manifesto included
objectives such as "promoting manly sport with a rifle" and "promoting travel and
exploration in the wild and unknown or partially unknown parts of the country,"
Roosevelt also intended the club to work for preservation of big game animals in order to
control the populations and impose stiff penalties for poachers who defied the protection
boundaries of Yellowstone when hunting (Harper's Weekly 37:1881). Roosevelt was as interested
in preservation as Muir, but his approach emphasized the wild in the west, in keeping
with the differences established between Yosemite and Yellowstone.
Northern Pacific sided with the future president and worked with the preservationists
in the Northwest just as Southern Pacific did in the Southwest. In traditional Northern
Pacific fashion, railroad officials created publicity for wildlife protection in
America, beginning with a proposed expansion in Yellowstone that would ensure a preserve for
migratory wildlife during the winter. When land speculators in Cooke City, Montana
lobbied for permission to mine ore on the border of the park, Northern Pacific and
Roosevelt opposed vehemently and gained editorial support from the popular press. An
1893 issue of Harper's featured an editorial on the issue that praised Northern Pacific's
stance, saying that "if the people of the United States took in this national park the same
kind of interest that people in New York and Philadelphia take in Central and Fairmount
Parks, there would be fewer efforts made to encroach upon it,"
which appealed to the sensibilities of Easterners by couching the argument in terms of the city parks they
enjoyed (Harper's Weekly 37:1892 2).
Northern Pacific president Terry Oakes declared in the same article, "let the vandals once
get a foothold in it... and there will be nothing worth preserving" (3). Sixty years later,
well after the railroad passed its heyday, Jackson Hole and Grand Teton were annexed to
Yellowstone and Northern Pacific received full credit for the idea initially proposed by
passenger agent Olin D. Wheeler in a 1902 issue of Wonderland magazine, the
Sunset of the Northern Pacific (Runte TD 24).
Northern Pacific was quick to capitalize on Yellowstone's reputation as America's largest game
Roosevelt was instrumental in bringing the value of preservation to the attention of the
public, and his practical perspective on wilderness won the approval of many influential citizens.
Roosevelt saw the wilderness as something the nation could and should use for economic
development, but his emphasis was on wise and controlled use. To him, the failure to use
available resources was as wasteful as exploiting them without regard for future need and
availability. His association with Northern Pacific railroad, although unintentional and
unofficial, worked to the favor of the railroad. Now the Northern Pacific was able to
market their expanded passenger service to include wilderness tourists, and Yellowstone succeeded
in becoming a sportsman's paradise and a camper's dream.
Lower fares and increased interest in wilderness brought new visitors to the parks each
year. Preservation was popular, and new railroads followed the precedents of Yosemite
and Yellowstone to discover and invent playgrounds along their lines. The Santa Fe Railroad
adopted the Grand Canyon in Arizona, the Utah valleys, and ancient Native American
ruins; the Great Northern worked with Glacier National Park almost as aggressively as
Northern Pacific promoted Yellowstone; and the Burlington Northern promoted the
Dakotas and Wyoming. If the land the rails sought for protection was worthless
for valuable resources but featured majestic and
monumental scenery, protection was justified because the railroads demonstrated that scenic
preservation in Yosemite and Yellowstone was indeed profitable for the nation.
Although personal profiteering was forbidden in any National Park, protection was
not "inalienable." Future development in National Parks was limited to profit which was
in the "national interest," meaning that if natural resources in the park could provide
more benefits to the economy than the railroad-related profits could, protection would be repealed. Runte
this distinction between valid and illegitimate development marked the double standard
of the National Parks: "the sin of exploitation was not the pursuit of personal gain, but
personal gain that could not be defended as being in the national interest" (Runte NP
53, emphasis mine). Tourism, of course, could be defended as being in the national
interest because the railroads were providing the means for all Americans to commune
with a preserved monument to their cultural history, thus uniting
profit with patriotism.
Boom Times in America's Playgrounds, 1900-1916