America’s Best Idea
Yellowstone National Park and Frontier Mythology: Preservation or Commercialisation?
‘Frontier mythology has shaped Americans’ perception of the world, defined individual and collective identities, and brought citizens together as a nation’, Mark Daniel Barringer suggests in his study Selling Yellowstone. To define frontier mythology as an American narrative would be to look to the concept of progress, finding a place of opportunity and the venture into what has been referred to as the untamed. It is a sense of adventure and forward movement that has been integral to American identity. As proposed by Frederick Jackson Turner in his 1893 proposal of the Frontier Thesis, ‘The frontier promoted the formation of a composite nationality for the American people’, and this idea still holds a presence in contemporary conversation. Whilst there is a darker, more historically accurate side to frontier mythology - that of the removal of Native Americans being perhaps the most significant - the mythology is held deeply in American popular consciousness. To define preservation would be to keep something the same, to reduce its loss of value or quality, and to avoid damage or decay. In a contemporary context, there is perhaps no other place that embodies the ideological elements of frontier mythology than the national parks of America. Since its conception, Yellowstone National Park has played into the Old West narrative – a colloquial term for the American frontier - and continues to reaffirm its place in American imagination through its use and commercialisation of the mythology. By looking at the origin of Yellowstone, the ways in which it has been challenged, the conservation of original business strategies, and the use of the Old West aesthetic, the connection between the commercialisation of frontier mythology and the success of the Park is undeniable.
On 1 March, 1872, Yellowstone became the world’s first national park when a Protection Act was signed by President Ulysses S. Grant with the intention of preserving the land for future generations. The magnificence and grandeur of the land had given Americans a new-found sense of pride, distinction and romantic nationalism, one that needed to be protected. The land was ‘set apart as a public park or pleasuring-ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people’; at its very heart, it was created with American people in mind. It was a space for losing oneself in a sense of adventure and the “Great Outdoors”, an idea that was deeply rooted in Americans since the age of the pioneers. The stories of the Old West were preserved for visitors in the parks: ‘nature, wildlife, the frontier, or just a simpler past, all of those things that the stories told them they would find’.4 As much as Yellowstone was originally constructed on ideas of conservation, it was maintained and commercialised on imagination: ‘the myths that made [the parks] valuable could be appropriated and used to generate wealth’, and this remains the same today.
The romanticism and nationalism of frontier mythology is undeniably ingrained in American identity, but it has been challenged and questioned throughout history. In a contemporary context, this has only increased. Some have suggested that the desire to preserve the frontier mythology that many look for in visiting the parks has ‘masked a reality of conquest and destruction’. As suggested by Terry Tempest Williams in The Hour of Land, ‘The creation of America’s national parks has been the creation of myths’, and there is an element of commercial appeal in those myths. In any conversation about American land, it is imperative to address the harm that the process of ‘discovery’ has had. When Yellowstone was developed, the federal government did not want visitors to come into contact with the Native tribes to whom the “wilderness” was home. Images of a perceived untamed and uncivilised life posed too stark a contrast to the purity and perfection of the land they were trying to preserve. Blackfeet, Bannock, Shoshone, and Crow Nations were removed from the land, or relegated and relocated to the margins. This was the time of “Indian removal”, and this part of the park’s history seems to be a direct link to the reality of frontier history.
However, whilst the presence of Native Americans and the history of mistreatment may have been suppressed from the romanticised mythology, it is not unaddressed by the Park. To some extent, it is the contemporary challenging of these harmful histories that is bringing about an increase in education and awareness. As suggested by folklorist Mody Boatright, ‘The more these [cherished] values are threatened, the more vigorously will the myth be defended’. Within the National Park Service, there is a consistent amount of work being done in order to ‘respect and strengthen Indigenous connections to Yellowstone and their role in park stewardship’.
The original mythology has presented Native peoples as villains, the enemy, and the unknown, bringing about connotations of danger and exoticism. The Parks have needed to find a way to acknowledge and understand the harm that the original creation did, whilst finding a way to move forward and maintain the story that Yellowstone is loved for. Events and organisations within the Park system aim to return a focus on the Native presence, one that is respectful and understands the land not as a ‘wilderness’, but as a physical home for Native tribes and an escapist home for the American imagination. The promotion of increased education and positive change is going to appeal to a generation that has genuine concerns about the damaging aspects of American history. In a way that is suitably and progressively adapted to contemporary concerns and context, the myth is still being preserved whilst understanding its audience. To rewrite frontier mythology may not be possible, but to edit it to make more sense in a modern world is a possibility. However, with that modernity, comes an inevitable commercialisation.
The romanticised version of the Old West is a narrative seen in American film, television, literature, music, and fashion. Despite its historical inaccuracies, it is held in the American psyche as an ideal and escapist environment incomparable to almost anything else. Continuing this idealisation into the advertisement of Yellowstone acts as an appeal to a subconscious longing for escape and freedom. In the years following the Great Depression, the Works Progress Administration Federal Arts Project designed posters advertising the parks in their ‘See America’ campaign. Many of these, particularly those for the Yellowstone area, feature Native American imagery. According to William M. O’Barr, the sole purpose of using Native American motifs was to ‘incorporate colorful, exotic imagery into advertising directed at a non-Native market’. The designs feature stereotypical aspects of Native culture, such as teepees and Native symbols, all playing into an idea of the “mythological Indian”. There is a removal of specific identity in the advertisements, an idea that could be viewed through Stephanie Molholt’s understanding of the “Plains Indian Motif”: continuing a stereotype that groups together Native peoples, without distinction between tribes, and simply appeals to the generic interest and aesthetic of Native culture. As Molholt suggests, ‘If narratives presented in these advertisements did not reflect cultural beliefs... they would have no resonance within a society’. Applying this to national parks furthers the idea of frontier mythology consistently being used to appeal to an audience with a long held intrigue in the Old West.
In a vintage television commercial from the 1940s, an idealisation of Yellowstone is demonstrated visually and through language. Yellowstone is presented as an opportunity to return to the past and experience the same sense of adventure as the pioneers: ‘The early pioneers pushed their way laboriously across this country, but it’s only in our great national parks that we’ve preserved, unchanged, the really wild things and the immense Wilderness they knew,’ the voiceover says. It directly advertises Yellowstone as being an ‘unchanged’ preservation of the past, as being the only place where you can connect with America’s romanticised history. There is a sense of longing and nostalgia within this narrative, but there is also an idea of modernity, suggesting that anywhere outside of Yellowstone has lost this sense of collective American adventure: ‘Herds of buffalo live in these mountains, a symbol of our vanished Frontier’. As seen from the early twentieth century advertisements, Yellowstone has been sold as an escape from the reality of a modernising world, and the current commercialisation is still fundamentally based on this same opportunity to escape to a romanticised past.
A study by the National Park Service showed that $623 million was spent by visitors to Yellowstone in 2023, supporting not just the Park, but local gateway regions too. The revenue made from entrance fees provides over $12 million a year, and is used ‘to fund critical projects that improve services and protect resources’. Yellowstone has charged an entrance fee since 1916, but beyond that, steadily increasing commercialisation has been prevalent throughout the Park, the near- universal appeal of the Western frontier aesthetic largely fuelling the economy. ‘More than a century ago, Yellowstone was the American frontier. For many making a journey to Yellowstone was to go as far west as one could,’ the online store states. The entrance fee is not just one to the Park, it is one to a story of the American West in which people can relive this romanticised history in as authentic a way as possible. Yellowstone has been ‘designed and marketed... as a museum of mythology’, the landscape itself has been ‘created to look like what Americans wanted to believe the Old West once was’, the story of Yellowstone has been designed for its consumers. This is only further developed for visitors through the shopping experience offered by the park.
The Hamilton General Stores were founded in 1915 by concessionaire Charles A. Hamilton, with fourteen stores built throughout the park that ‘offer Yellowstone visitors useful items and authentic keepsakes’. The trading post-style stores still stand now, with original architecture immersing visitors into the Old West experience whilst meeting contemporary demands for ‘useful items and authentic keepsakes’, some of which hold a familiarity. Now known as the Yellowstone General Stores, the mythology is maintained through selling items like knives and bandanas that would have also been available to adventure-seeking visitors in the early eighteenth century. An online listing for a ‘Juniper Wood Knife’, describes it as ‘a tribute to the wild spirit of Yellowstone’, equally beautiful and functional with traditional craftsmanship. There’s a complex relationship between authenticity and commercialisation with items like this – ultimately, they are allowing visitors to buy into the narrative, furthering and preserving the mythology itself. Describing it as a ‘tribute’ suggests that Yellowstone, as a business, is entirely aware of its opportunity to capitalise on the historical aesthetic.
Frontier mythology will continue to be contested and questioned, and rightfully so. However, there is such importance in recognising joy, love and passion in a world that makes cynicism the easy choice. There are elements of extreme darkness and oppression in the history of the frontier, as in the creation of national parks, however, it is vital when looking to a symbol of culture, expression and art to understand it in a contemporary context. Mythology is not intended to be the truth, it is intended to be a story and so ‘the very nature of mythology requires simplification and necessitates the exclusion of complicating factors’ for it to provide that familiar story. Trivial or not, there is a reason that the Old West holds such a prominent place in the American identity, the familiarity of the story allows people to escape from reality and into the romanticised mythology that national parks provide and promote. This is well summarised by Williams as she states that she ‘no longer see[s] America’s national parks as our “best idea”, but our evolving idea’: they are an ‘ongoing struggle...to create circles of reverence in a time of collective cynicism’. Yellowstone National Park offers the opportunity to live out the American imagination, but its ability to successfully preserve that experience is dependent on the financial income and support generated by National Parks commercialism.
Understanding frontier mythology as a vessel for imagination, for appreciation, for pride and for American identity is what has kept the narrative associated to, and used by, Yellowstone since its initial development. It offers people the opportunity to lose themselves in the natural world, to find the nostalgia in the aesthetic, and to escape from a reality that in a modern world, is sometimes all too rapidly changing. Frontier mythology sold a romantic, idealised story to Americans, that same story was sold to national parks, and the parks sell it right back to its consumers. It has always worked, and will continue to work, because it is so deeply set into the foundation of the American identity. Yellowstone National Park is entirely commercialised. From its very inception, it was given a sellable tagline of ‘America’s Best Idea’; it was presented as an experience, one that might lack historical accuracy in some senses, but also one that ultimately plays into the narrative that Americans find identity in. ‘For over one hundred years, the story of the Old West was the story of America. We keep telling the story because it tells us the things we want to hear,’ Barringer summarises. Yellowstone embodies that story, so it will be advertised, promoted, commercialised and ultimately preserved in order to continue it. When something is loved enough, it is protected and preserved for future generations.
I'm a current American Studies student at the University of East Anglia with plans to continue my learning over in the United States. I wholeheartedly believe that America is a nation built on and fuelled by storytelling, and I am constantly enamoured by those stories. Most frequently, you'll find me talking about country music, on page and on air.
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