Are We There Yet?

On the forty-second page of “Are We There Yet?: The Golden Age of American Family Vacations” author Susan Sessions Rugh wrote (emphasis added):

feelings of national identity to sell tourism in the "See America First" movement.² What sets the postwar period apart is the increased scale of heritage travel. The linkage of education, democratic values, and travel reassured Americans of their superiority as they dealt with the insecurity of cold war politics. War veterans toured the United States as an affirmation of their own values and as a means of passing them on to their children. Travel to historic sites nurtured a commitment to the nation for which they had fought.

Visitors were searching for an affirmative national history better labeled as heritage, a selective remembering of what is "attractive or flattering" and ignoring all the rest. Historian Michael Kammen argues that the end of World War II "brought a pronounced sense of discontinuity between past and present," and Americans sought a "sense of continuity" by visiting historic sites and museums. About 49 million persons visted historic sites in the United States in 1954, and they could choose from about 1,000 historic restorations. Annual attendance surged 20 to 30 percent at historic sites and national parks until 1976, when it began to decline.³

We can label these travels pilgrimages because the destination is a special place, a place that has become set apart or "sacred." By going to those places, whether Washington D.C., or a religious shrine, tourists strengthened their sense of national or religious identity. Central to pilgrimage tourism is the quest for authenticity, to see the actual site of a historic event, the same monument visited by all Americans, or the very spot a miracle took place. In that way, tourists can better imagine themselves as part of a larger community or can travel backward in time, to imagine that they too were a part of history. They sought no ordinary history but instead pursued a grand narrative of national greatness, or for African Americans, equality in a time when Washington D.C., tourist homes turned them away. Parents who wanted their children to consider their citizenship, whether full or partial, took their children on pilgrimages to the sacred places of America. In the process, they strengthened their own sense of national ideals and reinforced their commitment to a nation with equal justice for all.⁴

Maps and guides facilitated civic pilgrimage by guiding travelers to national landmarks and historic sites in a landscape prepackaged for the traveling consumer. Map publishers, states, and automobile touring associations designed their products to appeal to the family on vacation, both by depicting families on maps and by mapping routes and listing sites that would most appeal to parents traveling with children. Maps and guides in hand, families set off on cross-country tours of historic sites or

More information about “Are We There Yet?: The Golden Age of American Family Vacations” (and the book itself) is available from:

• Amazon.com
• Barnes & Noble
• Powell's Books

(University Press of Kansas, May 2008. Hardcover, 240 pages. ISBN: 0700615881; EAN: 9780700615889.)

Comments

[Air Jordan]

&we are get together!