An Environmental History of Tourism in Rocky Mountain National Park

MARKETING THE MOUNTAINS: AN ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY OF TOURISM IN ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK BY C2008 Jerritt James Frank Submitted to the graduate degree program in History and the Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy ___________________________ Chairperson Committee Members* __________________________* __________________________* __________________________* __________________________* Date Defended:__________________ The Dissertation Committee for Jerritt James Frank certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: MARKETING THE MOUNTAINS: AN ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY OF TOURISM IN ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK ___________________________ Chairperson Committee Members* _______________________________* __________________________* __________________________* __________________________* Date Approved:__________________ ii CONTENTS Introduction iv One Making a National Park 18 Two A Vast Moving Caravan 58 Three Thinking Big 104 Four Fishing For Tourists 165 Five Going Native 217 Six Growing Elk 255 Seven Binding a Bountiful Nature 283 Conclusion 321 Bibliography 330 iii Introduction In 2005, Colorado generated more than eleven billion dollars in mineral production. That same year, the farmers and ranchers of the state contributed more than seven billion dollars to the state‘s economy. Although such figures speak to the importance of traditional resource extraction and production in the economy of western states like Colorado, over the past century another economic sector has increasingly challenged their dominance. During that same fiscal year, the Centennial State was the beneficiary of nearly nine billion dollars in economic activity directly related to tourism. Contributing significantly to that figure were the some three million people that visited Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP). Tourism in Colorado has roots stretching at least as far back as the 1860s, when boosters of the territory touted its great fishing and health benefits. Over the past one-hundred and fifty years, tourism in Colorado—and indeed across much of the American West—has supplemented local and regional economies. Given the past and present importance of tourism in states like Colorado, it stands to reason that it would be the subject of historical study, and indeed it has. Although the historiography of tourism in the American West is broad and diverse, the works of iv Earl Pomeroy, Marquerite Shaffer, Anne Hyde and Hal Rothman have been especially important. Marking the first in-depth investigation into the relationship between tourism and the American West was Pomeroy‘s 1957 In Search of the Golden West: The Tourist in Western America. To Pomeroy, the tourist ―is capital.‖ More than strangers in an unfamiliar land, they represent income as ―consumers of gasoline and ice-cream cones and real estate.‖1 Laying the foundation upon which Shaffer, Hyde, and others would later build, Pomeroy was one of the first to delineate the democratization of tourism in the West through a series of technological and sociological developments. Once the purview of only the wealthiest Americans (and Europeans), the American West steadily invited visitors of every social class to romp across the landscape as trains, later automobiles, and finally airplanes brought more people to and through the region.2 Pomeroy offers valuable insight into the complex processes through which the ―toured upon‖ assume roles that reflect the sort of authentic Western experience tourists sought. According to Pomeroy, the West ―plays West,‖ as it ―acts out a kind of Easterners view of the West based more on the testimony of television than of history.‖3 Since tourism is an endeavor predicated on selling an experience, and since a goodly number of those traveling West were non-Westerners who came with specific preconceived notions about what exactly an authentic Western experience 1 Earl Pomeroy, In Search of the Golden West: The Tourist in Western America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1957), vi. 2 Ibid., 223. 3 Ibid., 225. v entailed, westerners have often reshaped and repackaged themselves to conform to such expectations. Pomeroy also makes mention of the impact of the tourist upon the places they trod. Given that the field of environmental history was yet to develop in 1957, this insight was especially prescient. According to Pomeroy, the touring aristocrat of the nineteenth century was content to stay separated from nature, admiring its beauty from afar. As such, their impact upon the natural West was limited. Not until hoards of ―American‖ tourists of the mid-twentieth century arrived with their desire to climb mountain peaks, breathe the bracing air, and the experience home with them was the natural world transformed. Pomeroy is right about the transformative power of tourism, but incorrect about the innocuous nature of nineteenth century tourism. As the following chapters will demonstrate, the mere act of accommodating and attracting Eastern tourists initiated more than a century of significant environmental change in the American West. Historians have continued to build upon, refine, and expand many of the ideas first explored in Pomeroy‘s work. Anne Farrar Hyde‘s An American Vision: Far Western Landscape and National Culture, 1820-1920 also marks an important contribution to the understanding the connections between national identity, the American West, and tourism. Of central concern to Hyde is the process through which Americans sought to make sense of and define the American West. Hyde discovers that Americans of the early 19th century lacked the tools to define the region on its own terms. As such, they turned most frequently to European references vi to explain and define it. As the nineteenth century progressed, however, Americans cast about for a source of national identity—indeed national greatness—that transcended European comparison. In this sense, the promotion of the American West became part and parcel of the creation of a distinct American identity. In short order those who had a vested economic stake in the West, especially railroad companies, began creating a unique western architectural style that reflected the region‘s nascent identity. According to Hyde, railroad companies found that ―American tourists responded with enthusiasm to the packaging of wilderness, deserts, and Indians in a luxurious yet rustic setting.‖4 Central to the development of an architectural style that was distinctly American was the creation of great Western national parks like Yellowstone and Yosemite, where the rustic Western American architectural style was embodied in its fullest form. Reinforcing the findings of Pomeroy, Hyde also finds that over time tourism in the West has undergone a democratizing process. Hyde argues that railroad companies initially held sway over the earliest years of the development of western tourism both in their control of wealthy clientele and of how the West was presented to tourists. As the twentieth century approached, however, their control waned. Driving this democratizing impulse were national parks—great swaths of land that were to serve as playgrounds for all Americans, not just the well-to-do. The development of parks, argues Hyde, was in no small part driven by the recognition of the importance of great Western landscapes in shaping national identity, and the 4 Anne Farrar Hyde, An American Vision: Far Western Landscape and National Culture, 1820-1920 (New York: New York University Press, 1990), 296. vii subsequent understanding that they must be protected. The second democratizing tool in Western tourism was the arrival of the automobile, which ―signaled a defeat for the railroad in their quest to control access to the far western landscape.‖5 Less interested in the West in the formation of national identity and more interested in the costs of tourism is Hal Rothman. Through his Devil’s Bargains: Tourism in the Twentieth-Century American West, Rothman investigates the hidden costs associated with the growth of tourism. The most significant of Rothman‘s contributions is his contention that the transition to tourist-based economies comes with a slew of significant socioeconomic costs often paid by locals who lack access to capital. Although many communities like Sun Valley and Steamboat Springs turned to tourism to supplement their economic base or to escape the bonds of extractive industry, Rothman finds that the growth of modern commercial tourism resulted in the loss of local control of economic development and the dilution and diminution of local identity. In short, argues Rothman, ―Regions, communities, and locales welcome tourism as an economic boon, only to find that it irrevocably changes them in unanticipated and uncontrollable ways.‖ Moreover, contends Rothman, ―[t]ourism transforms culture into something new and foreign; it may or may not rescue economies.‖6 5 Ibid., 301. 6 Hal Rothman, Devil’s Bargains: Tourism in the Twentieth-Century American West (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998), 10. For more on the cultural dimensions of tourism, see Hal Rothman, ed., The Culture of Tourism, the Tourism of Culture: Selling the Past to the Present in the American Southwest (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2003). viii In this sense, a good deal of Rothman‘s book concerns itself with the aspect of tourism that was first struck upon by Pomeroy nearly fifty years prior. Specifically, through the process of attempting to

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