Devil's Bargains: Tourism in the Twentieth-Century American West

By Hal K. Rothman

Book Overview

The West is popularly perceived as America's last outpost of unfettered opportunity, but twentieth-century corporate tourism has transformed it into America's "land of opportunism." From Sun Valley to Santa Fe, towns throughout the West have been turned over to outsiders--and not just to those who visit and move on, but to those who stay and control.

Although tourism has been a blessing for many, bringing economic and cultural prosperity to communities without obvious means of support or allowing towns on the brink of extinction to renew themselves; the costs on more intangible levels may be said to outweigh the benefits and be a devil's bargain in the making.

Hal Rothman examines the effect of twentieth-century tourism on the West and exposes that industry's darker side. He tells how tourism evolved from Grand Canyon rail trips to Sun Valley ski weekends and Disneyland vacations, and how the post-World War II boom in air travel and luxury hotels capitalized on a surge in discretionary income for many Americans, combined with newfound leisure time.

From major destinations like Las Vegas to revitalized towns like Aspen and Moab, Rothman reveals how the introduction of tourism into a community may seem innocuous, but residents gradually realize, as they seek to preserve the authenticity of their communities, that decision-making power has subtly shifted from the community itself to the newly arrived corporate financiers. And because tourism often results in a redistribution of wealth and power to "outsiders," observes Rothman, it represents a new form of colonialism for the region.

By depicting the nature of tourism in the American West through true stories of places and individuals that have felt its grasp, Rothman doesn't just document the effects of tourism but provides us with an enlightened explanation of the shape these changes take. Deftly balancing historical perspective with an eye for what's happening in the region right now, his book sets new standards for the study of tourism and is one that no citizen of the West whose life is touched by that industry can afford to ignore.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0700609105
• ISBN13: 9780700609109
• Release Date: October 1998
• Publisher: University Press of Kansas
• Length: 448 Pages
• Weight: 1.94 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.2" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Too Long

I read the book as part of a course I took, and I found the book to be too long, and somewhat dry. However, Dr. Rothman, a UNLV history professor, does make a very clear point: that tourists towns or places are dealt a "devil's bargain" in which they lose the authenticity of the place for the funds or profit that is brought in by tourists. Overall, Dr. ROthman does drive his point home. But the same point is made in 20 different ways.

Informative, fascinating, entertaining

I was born into the park service and lived the tourist experience. This book really helped me form a perspective about my early years growing up in western tourist and resort environments. Western history is fascinating, but this angle on western history really gives another intriguing dimension to america's perception of the mythic frontier.

why there's no there there...

At once extremely learned and passionately engaged, DEVIL'S BARGAINS puts forward a startling analysis of Western tourism. From Rothman we learn about skiing and much else: the economic and historical forces shaping our sense of place, our connections to nature, and our troubled relationships to one another. A travel book of another sort, it takes the reader to a vantage point from which our Western landscapes can be seen most clearly.

a richly detailed assessment and critique

For discerning travelers planning a western vacation this summer, or for that matter, for anyone curious about the popular allure of the West, Hal K. Rothman's "Devil's Bargains" is a must read. Rothman, a professor of western and environmental history at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, provides a richly detailed assessment and critique of the development of tourism as it has evolved from the late nineteenth century to the present in the inter-mountain West. Synthesizing the existing scholarship on tourism, enhanced by wide ranging primary research, Rothman reveals a fascinating, yet disturbing, underside to the glitz and glamour of the tourist economies firmly established in western resort towns from Santa Fe to Las Vegas."Devil's Bargains" presents a series of provocative histories recounting the development of resort towns and tourist sites across the inter-mountain West including the Grand Canyon, Santa Fe, Carlsbad Caverns, Steamboat Springs, Aspen, Vail, Sun Valley, and Las Vegas, among others. The book also codifies the history of tourism under a new interpretative framework which divides the development of tourism into three phases: cultural and heritage tourism, recreational tourism, and entertainment tourism. Beginning at the turn of the century with cultural and heritage tourism spawned by the transcontinental railroads seeking to expand passenger traffic, tourism evolved into recreational tourism made possible by the automobile and a growing fascination with exercise and the outdoors in the aftermath of World War I, and culminated after World War II with entertainment tourism dependent on the Jet airplane and the dramatic expansion of widespread prosperity, a leisure ethic, and a pervasive consumer culture. Rothman focuses on the Grand Canyon and Santa Fe to illustrate cultural and heritage tourism; various western ski resorts define recreational tourism; and Las Vegas embodies entertainment tourism. These three phases of tourist development reflect the historical transformation of tourism from an elite pastime to a more individualized, democratic experience, to a mass culture phenomena. They also reveal a process of economic development, reflecting the evolving strategies adopted by western communities to replace tapped out extractive economies.Defining tourism as the quintessential service economy, the pinnacle of post-industrial capitalism, Rothman argues that the promises of tourist industries have been embraced as a panacea for economic decline in towns throughout the West. However, as his research reveals, locals and even "neonatives" have found tourism to be a bitter pill to swallow. Although the advent of tourist economies in places such as Jackson Hole, Steamboat Springs, and Sun Valley has resulted in phenomenal economic growth, prosperity has come with a price. As the book's title suggests, in the process of reviving the economy, tourism displaces locals with outside ca

Outstanding! a book for anyone who deals with tourism

For those of us who live in tourist towns and see how the incredible number of visitors changes them, this is the book! It looks at a large number of places -- from Santa Fe to Maui, from Las Vegas to Aspen -- and shows in great detail how they change. It reads well too, on a par with better known authors like Robert D. Kaplan and Tim Egan. I heard the author speak here in town--I guess he lives here-- and it made me buy the book. I came away extremely impressed. This is not my usual reading. I'm more a John Grisham type. But this one rang bells for me. After I read this book, I was in Thailand on business and I found myself using Devil's Bargains as a lens for what I was seeing. The comparisons were striking and I wondered if this book might apply to more than the West. Well written and snappy, showing a lot of research, this one is a real winner, especially for anyone in city planning or tourist development.