Touring by automobile in 1932 The American West as stereotype

Abstract

The diary and associated photographs descriptive of an automobile trip in 1932 from St. Paul, Minnesota to San Francisco, California are analyzed for topical and place emphasis. The purpose of this article is to suggest how automobile travel colored the tourist's impressions of the West as a region. High speed travel along established routes, scenery contrived through automobile accessibility (especially in Yellowstone National Park), and a sense of history derived from the popular media made the West a distinctive, albeit highly stereotyped place. The scenic curiousities of mountain, canyon, and desert topography dominated Joseph Washburn's concern with the West as a region. To him the West was a place of vast scale and natural beauty. Much attention was given to the logistics of travel. Travel inconvenience was seen as a form of adventure in what was necessarily a region of adventure.