ABSTRACT

With the establishment of the National Park Service in 1916, “See America First” became the slogan of the national government and national parks were officially designated as representative sites of America. As western boosters had used the term to promote local sights 1 and the Northern Pacific had used it to sell tours to Glacier, the National Park Service made it its business to sell tourists on spending their summer vacations visiting America's national parks. Threatened by utilitarian conservation's emphasis on productive use of natural resources, the “National Park Idea” was developed and sold as contributing to the character, welfare, and education of Americans and therefore essential to the preservation and productivity of the United States. At this point the national parks, both as advanced by the sellers and as received by the consumers, most closely and openly approximated the icons and pilgrimage sites of a national religious shrine. The story of the establishment of the National Park Service became a second origin story for the national parks, suggesting a new beginning as the campfire story had done in the nineteenth century.