In Search of the Golden West: The Tourist in Western America, Second Edition / Edition 2

by Earl Pomeroy, Bill Deverell

Overview

The first transcontinental railroads brought fashionable easterners to the American West. In the 1880s and 1890s they traveled in sumptuous "palace cars" and stayed at luxury hotels. Westerners with an eye on promotion turned to what they took to be their own traditions. After 1900 a wilder West became popular; the Indian was rediscovered, and the cowboy returned to the saddle, if only during fiestas and rodeos. Increasing numbers of tourists headed for "natural curiosities" such as the sequoias of Yosemite and the geysers of Yellowstone. Then mass-produced automobiles and cheap air, rail, and bus fares changed the face of western tourism forever.

In Search of the Golden West offers splendid old-time photographs and descriptions of nabobs, hucksters, naturalists, dudes, realtors, and motorists--all those who sought the reality and created the myth of the Golden West.

Earl Pomeroy (1915-2005) was professor emeritus of history at the University of California, San Diego, and professor emeritus of history at the University of Oregon, Eugene. He was a pioneer in studying sociocultural trends in western history and wrote numerous acclaimed books on the American West in the twentieth century, including The Pacific Slope and The American Far West in the Twentieth Century. William Deverell is a professor of history at the University of Southern California and the director of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West. He is the author or editor of several books, including Whitewashed Adobe: The Rise of Los Angeles and the Remaking of Its Mexican Past and (with David Igler) A Companion to California History.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780803228207
Publisher:	UNP - Bison Books
Publication date:	06/01/2010
Edition description:	Second Edition
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Earl Pomeroy (1915–2005) was professor emeritus of history at the University of California, San Diego, and professor emeritus of history at the University of Oregon, Eugene. He was a pioneer in studying sociocultural trends in western history and wrote numerous acclaimed books on the American West in the twentieth century, including The Pacific Slope and The American Far West in the Twentieth Century. William Deverell is a professor of history at the University of Southern California and the director of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West. He is the author or editor of several books, including Whitewashed Adobe: The Rise of Los Angeles and the Remaking of Its Mexican Past and (with David Igler) A Companion to California History.

Table of Contents

I. Palace Cars and Pleasure Domes
II. Europe in the Wilderness
III. Discoverers of the Wild West
IV. The Growing Tourist Market
V. Americans Move Outdoors
VI. Filling Up the Wide-Open Spaces
VII. The Vanishing Tourist
A Note on the Sources
Index

Editorial Reviews

“Wise is the author who selects a topic which invites reading. Earl Pomeroy has done this with his latest volume, In Search of the Golden West. Undaunted by the mass of material that remains of so recent an era, he has come up with a kaleidoscopic view that is a useful [book].”—Emmett A. Greenwalt, Pacific Historical Review

The Pacific Historical Review - Emmett A. Greenwalt

“[Pomeroy’s] book is small in the number of pages, but large in the research which has been distilled to fill these pages, and has copious footnotes to help the future researcher. Possibly more important for most readers, Pomeroy has chosen his material wisely, and has presented it vividly, with frequent well-turned phrases which often bring chuckles, and with flashes of insight that illuminate the entire story.”—Robert E. Riegel, Montana: The Magazine of Western History

Montana - Robert E. Riegel

“Pomeroy has given us an acute, engaging, and provocative book: a lively look at ourselves as dudes and dude-wranglers over a century in which both time and tide were westward running.”—Saturday Review

Saturday Review

“Wise is the author who selects a topic which invites reading. Earl Pomeroy has done this with his latest volume, In Search of the Golden West. Undaunted by the mass of material that remains of so recent an era, he has come up with a kaleidoscopic view that is a useful [book].”—Emmett A. Greenwalt, Pacific Historical Review

— Emmett A. Greenwalt

The Pacific Historical Review

“[Pomeroy’s] book is small in the number of pages, but large in the research which has been distilled to fill these pages, and has copious footnotes to help the future researcher. Possibly more important for most readers, Pomeroy has chosen his material wisely, and has presented it vividly, with frequent well-turned phrases which often bring chuckles, and with flashes of insight that illuminate the entire story.”—Robert E. Riegel, Montana: The Magazine of Western History

— Robert E. Riegel

Montana

"[Pomeroy's] book is small in the number of pages, but large in the research which has been distilled to fill these pages, and has copious footnotes to help the future researcher. Possibly more important for most readers, Pomeroy has chosen his material wisely, and has presented it vividly, with frequent well-turned phrases which often bring chuckles, and with flashes of insight that illuminate the entire story."

— Robert E. Riegel, Montana: The Magazine of Western History

Montana: The Magazine of Western History