ABSTRACT
When the Grand Canyon was designated a National Park in 1919, Charles Lummis, who had been a fan of the Grand Canyon since his “Tramp Across the Continent” in 1892, proclaimed this place to be America's sacred shrine: “The Grand Canyon Bids you! Come, all ye Peoples of the Earth, to witness God's boldest and most flaming Signature across Earth's face! Come—and penitent—ye of the US, to marvel upon this chiefest Miracle of our own land!… 1 In his 1892 book he had lamented that American travelers “care so little to see the wonders of their own land. … It is a crying shame that any American who is able to travel at all should fail to see nature's masterpiece upon this planet before he gads abroad to visit scenes that would not make a visible scratch upon its walls.” 2 Lummis is speaking with the voice of the “See America First” campaign, a combination of economic boosterism and nationalism that officially became a tourism slogan in 1905 when Fisher Sanford Harris, of the Salt Lake City Commercial Club proclaimed, “See Europe If You Will. But See America First.” 3
