Loading...
Sightseeing in Texas, 1836-1916
Schooley, Leanna Starr Biles
Schooley, Leanna Starr Biles
Citations
Altmetric:
Soloist
Composer
Publisher
Date
2017
Additional date(s)
Abstract
This study examines the importance of place in Texas from independence in 1836 to the establishment of the passing of the Federal Aid Road Act of 1916 that signaled the growing importance of automobiles in American travel. Sightseeing in Texas in the eighty years after its separation from Mexico demonstrated that residents and visitors alike sought out unique locations of historic, scenic, and innovative worth not only to satisfy an inherent personal curiosity, quest for knowledge, and need for entertainment, but also to help them relate to this comparatively new and unfamiliar land. Through the process of exploring, assessing, and assigning value to what they saw, travelers transformed sites, innocuous places with no particular meaning, into sights, places of distinction that merited seeing with ones own eyes. In return, the sights they came to know and the stories connected to them contributed to the collective Texas identity. Exploring how people experienced places of interest in Texas shows instances both of continuity and of change in attitudes toward the past. The locations described here formed the first hint of what the automobile age would transform into modern heritage tourism sites. As motoring rapidly increased in popularity so too did the desire to see interesting places along new routes. This concentrated look at Texas places in the past will serve as an important foundation to understand the impact of auto-based sightseeing and tourism over the subsequent hundred years (1916-2016).
Contents
Subject
Subject(s)
Tourism Texas History.
Heritage tourism Texas History.
Travelers Texas.
Texas Description and travel.
Heritage tourism Texas History.
Travelers Texas.
Texas Description and travel.
Research Projects
Organizational Units
Journal Issue
Genre
Dissertation
Description
Format
1 online resource (v, 287 pages).
Department
History