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Sacred Sites: Nature and Nation in the U.S. National Parks

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2018

Lynn Ross-Bryant
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Abstract

The U.S. National Parks, which first developed as the nation fragmented during the civil war, have played a central role in the unifying discourse of America. The parks are able to serve this role because of the close alliance between nature and nation in U.S. discourse. Nature “set apart” in the parks becomes the embodiment of an archetypal America, which is the ever-pristine source of the greatness of the nation and the people. As such, it serves as a sacred site and a unifying symbol in U.S. American culture.

By approaching the parks as pilgrimage sites, we can examine the American values that have been embodied in them. Using a model that assumes the heterogeneity of any religio-cultural event, we can see the often conflicting values both in the spiritual, scientific, national and economic discourses that make up the parks and in the embodiment of those discourses in the physical developments in the parks. Central to both is the paradoxical ideal behind the parks: to preserve wilderness.

The goal of the essay is two-fold: 1) as part of the comparative study of religions, to suggest the usefulness of a heterogeneous, spatialized model for analyzing sacred places and to apply the model to the study of American culture in order to understand more about how the embodiment of nature and nation in the National Parks has worked as a unifying symbol while at the same time disclosing contested and conflicting values in American society, and 2) to show how the meanings surrounding this symbol are being transformed today.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religion and American Culture , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , Winter 2005 , pp. 31 - 62
Copyright
Copyright © Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture 2005

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References

Notes

1. Morinis, Alan, ed., Sacred Journeys: The Anthropology of Pilgrimage (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1992), 4, 1Google Scholar.

2. Charles Long defines religion as “orientation … , how one comes to terms with the ultimate significance of one's place in the world,” in Significations: Signs, Symbols, and Images in the Interpretation of Religion (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986), 7. Catherine Albanese echoes and expands on Long in seeing religion as “the way or ways that people orient themselves in the world with reference to both ordinary and extraordinary powers, meanings and values,” in Nature Religion in America: From the Algonkian Indians to the New Age (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 6. Tweed, Thomas says, “Religions are cultural processes whereby individuals and groups map, construct, and inhabit worlds of meaning…. Mapping a symbolic landscape and constructing a symbolic dwelling involve negotiations for meaning and power in natural environments and at social sites,” in Retelling U.S. Religious History, ed. Tweed, Thomas A. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 12 Google Scholar. Appropriately for this work, space/place is integral to all these definitions.

3. Eade, John and Sallnow, Michael J., eds., Contesting the Sacred: The Anthropology of Christian Pilgrimage (New York: Routledge, 1991)Google Scholar. For more on contestation in sacred spaces, see Chidester, David and Linenthal, Edward T., “Introduction,” in American Sacred Space, ed. Chidester, David and Linenthal, Edward T. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995)Google Scholar.

4. The relation of tourist and pilgrim is a lively topic in anthropological pilgrimage studies, cultural studies, and the growing field of tourism. Eric Cohen's article, “Pilgrimage and Tourism: Convergence and Divergence,” in Morinis, Sacred Journeys, describes those who see the two converging in the contemporary world and includes Dean MacCannell in the group that sees tourism as a modern substitute for religion. MacCannell explores the nuances of this in The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class (New York: Schocken Books, 1976). In Empty Meeting Grounds: The Tourist Papers (London: Routledge, 1992), MacCannell asserts, “Tourism is not an aggregate of merely commercial activities; it is also an ideological framing of history, nature, and tradition; a framing that has the power to reshape culture and nature to its own needs” (1). Daniel Boorstin is an example of Cohen's divergence theory, seeing tourism as “a modern, mass-leisure phenomenon devoid of any deeper spiritual or cultural significance” (Morinis, Sacred Journeys, 48). Cohen offers alternative categories for the modern world of the tourist-pilgrim and tourist-traveler (ibid., 51–53). The level of activity surrounding this subject suggests to me its usefulness for studying contemporary religious phenomena.

5. Shields, Rob, Places on the Margin: Alternative Geographies of Modernity (London: Routledge, 1991), 18 Google Scholar.

6. Ibid., 14.

7. Ibid., 53.

8. Yosemite was ceded to the state of California by the federal government in 1864 with the proviso that it would be “held for public use, resort, and recreation … inalienable for all time.” Yellowstone was actually the first federal park, designated in 1872 (probably because there was no state to oversee it and also because of problems with disputed land claims in Yosemite). Yosemite high country and Sequoia were designated national parks in 1890 and Yosemite Valley was transferred from state to federal designation in 1906.

9. Emerson, Ralph Waldo, Selections from Ralph Waldo Emerson: An Organic Anthology, ed. Whicher, Stephen E. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1960), 80, 79Google Scholar.

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11. Sears, John F., Sacred Places: American Tourist Attractions in the Nineteenth Century (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1989), 4 Google Scholar.

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13. Albanese, Nature Religion, 58.

14. Novak, Barbara, ed., Nature and Culture: American Landscape and Painting, 1825–1875 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 7–8 Google Scholar.

15. Sears, Sacred Places, 124.

16. King, Thomas Starr, Vacation among the Sierras: Yosemite in 1860, ed. Hussey, John A. (San Francisco: Book Club of California, 1962), 43 Google Scholar.

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19. Oliver Wendell Holmes introduced a handheld viewer for the double images in 1859, enabling the armchair tourist to feel the super-real presence of the scenic wonders.

20. James Mason Hutchings, “The Mammoth Trees of California,” California Magazine, March 1859.

21. Greeley, Overland Journey, 315.

22. We see the conflicting visions in the reflections of L. H. Bunnell, one of the militia members on the raid in 1851. He notes the lack of culture in their captured Indian guides (and, therefore, their lack of interest in the beauty of the place) as well as the virtue of their “naturalness”—which later becomes an important part of the park “display.” “Though seemingly unimpressed by their sublime surrounds, their figures and comparisons, when not objectionable, were beautiful, because natural.” Lafayette Houghton Bunnell, Discovery of the Yosemite and the Indian War of 1851 (Chicago: Fleming H. Revell, 1880), 219.

23. Runte, Alfred, Yosemite: The Embattled Wilderness (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990), 20 Google Scholar.

24. Nickel, Douglas R. and Hambourg, Maria Morris, intro., Carleton Watkins: The Art of Perception (New York: Harry N. Abram and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1999), 10 Google Scholar.

25. Schama, Landscape and Memory, 191.

26. Yosemite: Saga of a Century, 1864–1964, intro. by John C. Preston, Superintendent, Yosemite National Park (Oakhurst, Calif.: Sierra Star Press and Yosemite Natural History Assn., 1964), 6.

27. Frederick Law Olmsted, intro. Laura Wood Roper, “The Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Big Trees, a Preliminary Report (1865),” Landscape Architecture, October 1952, 17.

28. Ibid., 22.

29. The Northern Pacific brought tourists to Yellowstone, and the Old Faithful Inn was constructed in 1904. The Santa Fe Railroad's Fred Harvey was largely responsible for the development of Grand Canyon, including his El Tovar Hotel (1905), even before the area was designated a national park. In Glacier, the Great Northern built Glacier Park Lodge in 1913.

30. See, for example, Lears, T. J. Jackson, No Place of Grace: Antimodernism and the Transformation of American Culture, 1880–1920 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1981)Google Scholar; Neumann, Mark, On the Rim: Looking for the Grand Canyon (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999)Google Scholar; Trachtenberg, Alan, The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age (New York: Hill and Wang, 1982)Google Scholar; Williams, Raymond, Culture and Society, 1780–1950 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983)Google Scholar; and Ziff, Larzer, The American 1890s: Life and Times of a Lost Generation (New York: Viking Press, 1966)Google Scholar.

31. Schaffer, Marguerite S., “Negotiating National Identity: Western Tourism and ‘See America First,’” in Reopening the American West, ed. Rothman, Hal (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1998), 132–33Google Scholar.

32. These parks were Yellowstone, Yosemite, Sequoia, Mount Rainier, Crater Lake, Mesa Verde, Glacier, and Rocky Mountain. Hot Springs Reservation, Grand Canyon National Monument, and several other national parks and monuments were also mentioned. In 1916, there were seventeen national parks.

33. Schaffer, “Negotiating National Identity,” 141.

34. Yard, Robert Sterling, The National Parks Portfolio (Washington, D.C.: Department of the Interior, 1917), 5 Google Scholar.

35. Quoted in Joel Daehnke, “A Remarkable Load of Original Sin: Labor, Leisure, and the Profane Landscape in Yellowstone National Park,” in Yellowstone National Park Archives (Yellowstone National Park, 1997).

36. Runte, Alfred, National Parks: The American Experience, 3d ed. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987), 100 Google Scholar.

37. Ibid., 103.

38. Quoted in ibid., 104.

39. Joseph Grinnell, head of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California, Berkeley, and Tracy I. Storer published an article in Science in 1916 that argued that to maintain the most important recreative opportunities of the park, scientific study of the flora and fauna of the parks was necessary. Grinnell undertook a nonauthorized study of the “natural history” of Yosemite in 1914, which was finally published, outside the park service, in 1924. It was not until 1928 that the park service approved George M. Wright's (a student of Grinnell) self-funded study of fauna of the parks. Fauna of the National Parks of the United States by Wright, Joseph S. Dixon, and Ben H. Thompson was published in 1933.

40. See, for example, Runte, Yosemite, and Sellars, Richard West, Preserving Nature in the National Parks: A History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977)Google Scholar for discussions of the conflicts between the National Park Service and scientists.

41. Quoted in Runte, Yosemite, 118.

42. Joseph Grinnell and Tracy Storer, “Animal Life as an Asset of National Parks,” Science, September 15, 1916, 379.

43. Ibid., 377.

44. Development “necessary” for accommodation of visitors was permitted by the park acts.

45. See Craighead, John J. and Craighead, Frank C., The Grizzly Bears of Yellowstone (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1995)Google Scholar.

46. Tilden, Freeman, The National Parks, rev. and enl. ed. (New York: Knopf, 1968), 22 Google Scholar. The possibility of reenacting the encounter and conquest of the virgin land builds on the “Frontier Hypothesis” of Frederick Jackson Turner, delivered to the American Historical Association in 1893. The closing of the frontier marked the end of an era that saw the greatness of America develop from the encounter with the frontier, meeting the challenge by reverting to primitive abilities, to replacing the frontier with civilization. See “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” in Frederick Jackson Turner, History, Frontier, and Section: Three Essays (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993).

47. In 1916, Frederic Clements advanced the concept of a “climax community”—the point at which vegetation was in equilibrium with the climate and no further “succession” would occur. Succession was seen to be an orderly process, which, without outside intervention, would continue to the climax community. When this was applied to forests, the conclusion was that, had the white man not arrived, all forests would come to resemble the old growth ponderosa forests—assumed to be the climax community and, hence, the most desirable form of forests. These views persisted for years, proclaiming scientific backing for a cultural idea. See Langston, Nancy, Forest Dreams, Forest Nightmares (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995), 125–27Google Scholar.

48. George Catlin had suggested, in 1832, that a park be established on the plains to preserve the life and culture of the Native Americans (and the buffalo). This proposal had no influence on the “national park idea,” which reflected an entirely different vision. It is only with the passage of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) in 1980 that new ways of thinking about national parks and indigenous peoples has occurred, as subsistence hunting and fishing is allowed under certain conditions within the parks. The terms of the act can be found online at http://www.nps.gov/wrst/anilca.htm.

49. At the Grand Canyon, the Harvey Company built the Hopi house in 1905, next to their grand El Tovar Hotel. It was designed by Mary Jane Colter to look like a Hopi dwelling, and Hopis were hired to live there, carrying on “traditional” activities in traditional dress to make the tourists’ park experience more authentic.

50. Sellars, Richard West, Preserving Nature in the National Parks (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 214–15Google Scholar. (The Leopold Report can be found online at http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/leopold/leopold.htm.) 51. Sellars, Preserving Nature, 214.

52. Indeed, one wonders if we might be seeing this tendency as more functions of the parks—including Interpretation in some cases, such as Yosemite—are “outsourced” with the claim of greater efficiency, despite studies that indicate it will be more costly. This would be a way of removing the symbolic power of the parks and turning them into “recreational facilities.”