ABSTRACT
Travel to the parks promised nineteenth-century visitors sublime experiences bordering on the spiritual and religious. The religious aspect in visitors’ experiences of American national parks has not lessened since nineteenth-century pilgrims first journeyed to Yellowstone and the other early parks. The literature on national parks is extensive. An impressive book on pilgrimage to the national parks uses a religious studies approach that combines perspectives of historical, phenomenological, and cultural studies in an investigation of religious travel to popular nature parks. In terms of their role in the patriotic devotions of American civil religion, national parks represent significant sites in the sacred landscape of the American nation. Yellowstone attracted visitors hoping to cure their ailing bodies in the hot mineral waters even before it became the world’s first national park. Yellowstone was not the first park that drew infirm pilgrims for healing their bodily ailments.
