Devoted to Nature by Berry Evan

Author:Berry, Evan
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780520285729
Publisher: University of California Press

Let me plead with you to [protect roadside timber in Washington State] on a big scale. If you spend . . . now you will receive a great deal for it; if you postpone it you will save very little for it. If you do now you will have almost the only spot on earth that is unspoiled; and can keep one portion of this land of ours in a condition fit to live in, fit to fight for, and which will show to those that come after us part of the beauty that nature has lavished upon us.131

A similar sentiment was expressed by one of the group’s allies in the Washington State legislature: “we of the Northwest are just beginning to realize the value of our natural resources in climate and scenic beauty, and if we are to reap . . . full value from the tourist trade there has to be got money used in preserving scenic spots of timber along the highways.”132 The core argument for setting aside public lands for recreational enjoyment and protecting them from economic overuse relied on an appeal to commercial sensibilities: “the advocates of parks and parkways were building for the future, and through bonds future residents . . . were being asked to help pay for the benefits they would enjoy.”133 These sentiments are noteworthy because they cannot be reduced to raw economic utility; instead, they were part of an aesthetic ideology that emphasized the value and meaning of nature as seen from the windows of an automobile.

This value was, of course, in part the commercial value of tourism, but the very possibility of a recreational industry rested on the intrinsic capacity of natural landscapes to move viewers. Nature was a visual resource, scenery translated into economic value because of its spiritual significance. Efforts to promote and develop nature-oriented tourism worked against the notion that protected wildernesses were “simply land set aside . . . and designated as ‘unusable,’ and argued instead that automotive tourism through the scenic landscapes of the American West were valuable as sources of ‘unrivaled experience,’ scientific knowledge, and inspiration.”134 In coupling these two kinds of value, economic and spiritual, in their case for the protection and development of scenic roadways, advocates of nature pilgrimage operated without clear boundaries between economic and religious spheres of discourse.

The emergence of automobile culture in the 1920s and 1930s was sweeping in its transformation of the social codes of travel, perceptions of nature, and the project of land conservation. Train travel during the nineteenth century had produced an upper-class mode of tourism that was “hegemonic and cultural,” with sites and tastes primarily conditioned by railroad companies and wealthy individuals with private rail cars. As automotive travel rose in popularity, new forms of tourism arose that were more “democratic” and “recreational” in focus.135 Railroad barons autocratically constructed the infrastructures of tourism, controlling and mediating the tourist’s experiences of nature and western life in ways that benefited their bottom line and reflected their bourgeoisie experience.

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