Transportation Systems as Cultural Landscapes in National Parks: The Case of Yosemite more

Society and Natural Resources, 21:797-811 Copyright © 2008 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 0894-1920 print/1521-0723 online DOI: 10.1080/08941920801942065 O Routledge <?! Taylor & Francis Croup Transportation Systems as Cultural Landscapes in National Parks: The Case of Yosemite YOLONDA L. YOUNGS School of Geographical Sciences, Arizona State University, Phoenix, Arizona, USA DAVE D. WHITE AND JILL A. WODRICH School of Community Resources and Development, Arizona State University, Phoenix, Arizona, USA Historical cultural geography and interpretive research are used to examine how Yosemite National Park visitors travel through and perceive the transportation system in order to explore broader meanings of transportation systems as cultural landscapes in national parks. Qualitative analysis of 160 semistructured interviews revealed that influences on visitors' transportation-related behavior include: (a) situational influences of the park environment and transportation system, such as convenience, access, cost, congestion, educational opportunities, and route find- ing; and (b) individual characteristics and experiential factors, such as subjective perceptions of freedom, environmental values, motivation for socializing, for soli- tude, and for accomplishment, and experience-use-history. This analysis sheds light on how the Park Service and visitors have embraced roads and cars in national parks, leading to a particular manifestation of cultural landscape and a choreographed and scripted visitor experience best defined as a travel narrative. Implications for park education and interpretation designed to influence visitors' expectations and behaviors are discussed. Keywords environmental policy, national parks and preserves, parks management, public lands, tourism Expected and Essential: Why Transportation Matters in National Parks Transportation networks are an essential but often overlooked component of the cultural landscape in national parks. Indeed, the very preservation of parks and wilderness areas in America is linked historically to tourist travel by trail, rail, and road (Dilsaver and Wyckoff 1999; Louter 2006; Shaffer 2001). Public support for park preservation in the 19th and early 20th centuries was bolstered by transpor- tation infrastructure that provided tourists with access to parks. Train and stage- coach travel, uncomfortable and expensive, dominated the transportation scene in early American national park history. Visitors endured long hours on trains followed by half- and full-day excursions along bumpy, dusty roads by stagecoach Received 8 June 2006; accepted 31 October 2007. Address correspondence to Dave D. White, School of Community Resources and Develop- ment, Arizona State University, 411 N. Central Ave., Suite 550, Phoenix, AZ 85004-0685, USA. E-mail: dave.white@asu.edu 797 798 Y. L. Youngs et al. (Schwantes 2001). As auto tourism replaced train tourism, members of the emerging middle class explored park landscapes in their personal vehicles, experiencing parks in a more direct way than train travel had allowed (Barnett 2004; Louter 2006). Direct, popular access to national parks via automobiles, however, presented new challenges. As early as 1920, National Park Service (NPS) Director Stephen Mather struggled between providing improved road access for the public and preservation of the parks (Havlick 2002). Today, park infrastructure, management mind set, and visitor expectations about automobile access are persistent issues for the park service (Dilsaver and Wyckoff 1999). The attempt to reconcile the values of visitor access and wilderness preser- vation is a defining theme of the American national park experience. Consider Yosemite National Park, one of the great parks of the world, renowned for glacially carved valleys, groves of giant sequoia trees, and spectacular vistas. Yosemite is also notorious for its densely developed visitor service areas and concentration of visitors in Yosemite Valley. One approach to providing visitor services while maintaining a wilderness mystique has been to try to blend roads and infrastructure into the park scene through landscaping and maintenance programs (Colten and Dilsaver 2005). For instance, safety and sanitation facilities such as sewage, garbage, and water transfer stations are camouflaged in the national park scene so that visitors do not view these areas. What role, however, does transportation infrastructure—expected, visible, and essential to visitors— play in visitor behavior and experience? Scholars are paying more attention to the role of transportation in national parks. This line of scholarship is instructive for our understanding of visitor experi- ence and behavior as well as cultural meanings of national parks in contemporary American society. Studies have focused on Acadia National Park (Daigle and Zimmerman 2004); Colonial National Historical Park (Shiftan et al. 2006); Glacier National Park (Dilsaver and Wyckoff 1999); Glacier, Mount Rainier, and Olympic National Parks (Louter 2006); Grand Canyon National Park (Laube and Stout 2000; Morgan 1985); Great Smoky Mountains National Park (Sims et al. 2005); Sequoia- Kings Canyon National Park (Dilworth 2003); and Yellowstone National Park (O'Brien 1966). Louter (2006) summarized the basic thesis of this scholarship: "We cannot understand parks without recognizing that cars have been central to shaping how people experience and interpret the meaning of national parks, especially how they perceive them as wild places" (164). We concur with this assess- ment but would add that we cannot understand national parks without understand- ing transportation systems more broadly. Transportation infrastructure in national parks has received relatively little attention in cultural or social science studies, yet these ubiquitous features—present in even the most notable of wilderness parks—are historically significant compo- nents of the cultural landscape. To further this scholarship, in this article we examine the role of transportation in the visitor experience and cultural meaning of Yosemite National Park through the lens of cultural landscape studies. Transportation Networks in National Parks as Cultural Landscapes Transportation networks around and through national parks, including roadways, railroads, and trails, are more than simply avenues of travel. These corridors are part of the cultural landscape and play an important role in the history and construction Transportation Systems as Cultural Landscapes 799 of visitor experiences (Jakle 1985; Dilsaver 1992). The transportation network is an important, essential, and expected part of the visitor experience that both the National Park Service and visitors must negotiate. The study of cultural landscapes is not new to geography, although framing and exploring national parks as cultural landscapes is a more recent view that is gaining momentum. This approach lies at the intersection of geography, history, cultural studies, and recreation and tourism studies. The study of cultural land- scapes in North America may be traced to its roots in the work of early cultural geographers. Carl Sauer's The Morphology of Landscape (1925) is the earliest theoretical claim in the United States to a distinctive cultural landscape produced by human activity. Sauer (1925) claimed that "culture is the agent, the natural area is the medium, the cultural landscape is the result" (12). Later geographers such as Lewis (1979) encouraged followers of the cultural landscape approach to "read" landscapes as an autobiography of human activity. In this sense, cul- tural landscapes were likened to sedimentary layers in a geological sequence, laid down upon the earth in layers of accretion that may be deciphered by a trained eye to better understand past ideas, meanings, and contexts embedded in these layers. Some early proponents of this cultural approach envisioned landscape as a synthetic space, not as "a natural feature of the environment" but instead as "a composition of man-made spaces on the land" (Jackson 1984, 7). Under this approach, cultural geographers studied regions such as the southwest United States (Francaviglia 1994), national historical portraits (Meinig 1988), vernacular landscapes (Jackson 1984), and rural landscapes (Hart 2002). Other geographers, such as Yi-Fu Tuan (1974) and Kenneth Olwig (2001), were careful in their approach to studies of landscape, citing its multiple meanings and contested ter- rain as both an actual place and an aesthetic location negotiated between com- munities, individuals, and landscapes. Early definitions of cultural landscapes in geography positioned landscapes as static places, bounded by a progressive accumulation of culturally imposed meanings on natural landscapes in the form of material features such as buildings and streets. Later geographers questioned this approach and injected a search for agency in land- scape creation and well as a deeper excavation of the term landscape. Cultural geography in the 1980s and into the 1990s began to expand the definition of land- scapes as dynamic scenes that were constantly shifting and restructuring with the tides of changing social, economic, political, and cultural structures. Landscape in this subsequent reincarnation was reconstituted as a medium of social formation, not merely a static autobiography of the human encounter with the earth. Cultural geographer Dennis Cosgrove (1984) advanced this view, arguing for a landscape way of seeing, a view that reconsiders the idea of landscape, landscape representations, and changing social formations. Cosgrove and Daniels (1988) called attention to the power of landscape to construct social relations and encourage an interpretation of landscape as a text encoded with multiple and sometimes conflicting social mean- ings. Cultural landscapes are symbolic and representative places that are produced through complex social interactions and negotiations. In this study, our approach to cultural landscape studies is similar to that of Schein (1997), but we apply the framework to the national park context. We argue that national park landscapes are produced through complex interactions between the National Park Service and park visitors, with each group exerting its own authorial stamp on the landscape. Cultural landscapes in national parks are not 800 Y. L. Youngs et al. static, confined to their material elements; rather, they are dynamic landscapes better understood as pathways through which multiple representations, practices, and performances of power, wielded by individuals and institutions, stream through an ongoing project to create and constrict how the material landscape looks and functions. This conceptual framework situates social, political, and economic interactions into a spatial, and therefore geographical, context. Cultural geographers and historians have explored national parks from a var- iety of angles. For example, geographers have traced national park imagery and place-making (Wyckoff and Dilsaver 1997); shifting boundaries and land use (Dilsaver and Wyckoff 1999); and human-environment interactions through time (Dilsaver and Colten 1992). Other geographers have focused on the tourist experi- ence in national parks in terms of attractions and design layout (Young 2002); the fight over conservation values (Dilsaver 2004); shifting notions of culture and nature in national parks (Pritchard 1999; Cronon 2003); and wilderness preser- vation (Vale 2005). Historians have also focused on national parks as study sites. Previous studies have explored the role of nature preservation and conservation in national parks (Sellars 1997; Mason 2004), as well as contested notions of what nature and culture mean in these protected public lands (Runte 1997; Dilsaver 2004; Vale 2005). Other studies have investigated how nature is constructed, consumed, and commodified in selected national park units (Schullery 1997; Germic 2001; Barringer 2002). Although a growing number of geographers and other scholars are addressing cultural landscapes in national parks, few focus their work on the historical and cultural aspects of transportation networks as socially constructed landscapes in these public playgrounds. Notable exceptions to this trend may be found in the works of Linda McClelland (1998) and Ethan Carr (1998). Both authors focus their attentions on the history and evolution of material landscape features in the national park system such as hotels, visitor centers, roads, and trails. These authors frame transportation infrastructure in national parks as cultural and historical landscapes keenly affected by the ebb and flow of policy shifts, environmental awareness, and visitor use. Our study of Yosemite National Park expands upon existing national park research by exploring these public lands as cultural landscapes, and, more specifically, how transportation systems may be read and interpreted as socially con- structed places. From a cultural landscape perspective, the park service's planning and management of the transportation network in Yosemite Valley serves in part to construct the visitor experience. Young (2002) argued that visitor travel in national parks is similar to theme parks and museums, where travel is spatially controlled with selected scenes and attractions appearing and disappearing in a planned order. In other terms, the transportation network, along with physical features of the park, sets boundary conditions within which subjective experi- ences of the park unfold. Patterson et al. (1998) call this situated freedom: "There is structure in the environment that sets boundaries on what can be per- ceived or experienced, but that within those boundaries recreationists are free to experience the world in highly individual, unique, and variable ways" (425-426). Although park transportation networks must conform to physical geography, they nonetheless represent the nexus between the natural features, the park ser- vice's presentation of the landscape to visitors, and the visitors' experience of the scenery and infrastructure. Transportation Systems as Cultural Landscapes 801 How Visitors Negotiate Transportation Systems In addition to cultural landscape studies, it is also informative to discuss research in the field of travel-mode choice research, which considers the factors that influence people's decisions when faced with various transportation options. Although most travel-mode choice research is focused on so-called "utility trips," as opposed to tra- vel in a leisure context, there are notable exceptions, such as a study by Anable and Gatersleben (2005). They showed that for leisure trips "noninstrumental factors" such as relaxation, freedom, and stress reduction were equally as important as instrumental factors such as flexibility, convenience, and monetary cost. Cao and Mokhtarian (2005) noted that such subjective experiential variables are rarely mea- sured or incorporated in analysis, but have significant influence on decision making. Anable and Gatersleben (2005), and others (Mokhtarian and Salomon 2001; Steg et al. 2001) remind us that traveling involves positive dimensions such as excite- ment and pleasure, in addition to the utilitarian goal of reaching a destination. Prior research also indicates that stress is moderated by feelings of freedom, independence, and being in control (Evans and Carrere 1991; Stradling et al. 1999). Perceived free- dom and control may have a stronger effect on travel choice in the leisure context, as these concepts are central to the experience of leisure itself (Iso-Ahola 1980). Along these lines, Iso-Ahola (1983) argued that researchers should consider effects of travel mode on perceived freedom, the individual's thoughts, and emotions. There is reason to believe that in the context of national park visits, people negotiate the transpor- tation system based, in part, upon the emotions that traveling generates. The Case of Yosemite From Toll Roads and Railroads to Autos and Busses: The History of Visitor Travel in Yosemite National Park Transportation networks in the early years of Yosemite were typical of many of the early park units, a system of toll roads and stagecoach routes reaching into the park from neighboring areas. Tourists traveled along railroad lines to stops near the park and boarded stagecoaches for the remainder of the trip (Figure 1). The first toll roads to reach Yosemite Valley in 1874 were the Coulterville and Yosemite Turnpike and the Big Oak Flat Road (NPS 1990). In 1875, the Wawona Road was completed to Yosemite Valley (Greene 1987). Early trails and roads into the park were privately built and maintained as toll roads until 1886, when ownership was exchanged through a grant and the roads were available to the public free of charge (Greene 1987). The Central Pacific Railroad was completed to Merced in 1872 and later in 1907 the Yosemite Valley Railroad arrived at El Portal, providing a node of connec- tion between railroad travel and stagecoach tours. As with other tourist destinations around the west, stagecoach travel was uncomfortable and involved long hours sit- ting in coaches traveling along bumpy, dusty roads. A visitor from this period recalls his experiences in the park: Early visitors to Yosemite paid well for its pleasures. To reach the valley by any of the old routes meant a hot and dusty ride of two or three days, in a primitive vehicle, over the roughest of mountain roads. In common with thousands of others, I painfully recall my first trip. We quit the train 802 Y. L. Youngs et al. Figure 1. Early visitors to Yosemite came into the Valley on horse-drawn stages over a dusty road, clinging perilously to the steep slopes. Photo credit, J. T. Boysen (1903), NPS Historic Photograph Collection. from San Francisco at Raymond, to endure a day of misery in a crowded "stage," which jolted us up from the low country into the noble valley of the South Fork at Wawona. (Williams 1914, 61) Despite inconveniences, coach travel was one of the limited choices of travel modes for early visitors. It allowed numerous tourists to gain access to areas beyond the reach of railroad lines (Schwantes 2001). In Yosemite, tourists traveled in groups as the stagecoaches rocked and swayed their way up the uneven roads and sharp incline along the Merced Canyon to Yosemite Valley. After the first automobiles were allowed into the park in 1913, the number of tourists increased dramatically (NPS 1990). Initial travel during the early auto- mobile touring years, however, did not overwhelmingly favor the private auto tour. Instead, visitors still made frequent use of railroad connections and group automobile tours. A traveler to Yosemite National Park in 1914, for example, still followed the railroad and stagecoach routes, connecting multiple lines and forms of transportation to access the park, as did earlier visitors. By 1914, the Southern Pacific and the Santa Fe Railway reached Merced and the Yosemite Valley Rail- road traveled from Merced to El Portal (Williams 1914). At El Portal travelers disembarked from the railroad and boarded automobile touring cars to Yosemite Village in Yosemite Valley. As roads were improved and enlarged throughout the 1900s, automobile traffic and private automobile touring grew (Colten and Dilsaver 2005). Indeed, autos were a common sight in the park after 1913 (Jakle 1985). Travelers with private automobiles could venture along the roads of the park at their own pace, in groups, or by themselves, deciding when and where to stop along the way. Once established as a reliable form of transportation, travel by private automobiles introduced a freedom of choice in travel modes and route finding that previous travel choices did not offer (Figure 2). Transportation Systems as Cultural Landscapes 803 Tension between automobiles, roads, and park preservation has existed since the early days of auto tourism (Shaffer 2001). For example, preservationists initially sup- ported automobile touring in California's north coast redwood region as a way to help educate and preserve natural areas; however, advocates later criticized automo- biles and roads as having a negative effect on preserving these lands (Barnett 2004). In Yosemite, these concerns grew as visitation increased from 1915 to 1930 in concert with improvement projects that widened and paved roads (Runte 1990). By 1954, visitation to Yosemite National Park reached 1 million. This figure continued to rise, so that by 1976 there were over 2 million visitors, and by the mid 1990s there were more than 4 million visitors to the park (NPS 2007). Throughout the years, Yosemite National Park has implemented several efforts to control and improve the transportation systems while reducing traffic congestion, including adjusting traffic patterns, removing private automobile travel along the eastern section of Yosemite Valley, and initiating a free public bus service in the valley (Greene 1987). This bus system was expanded after the extensive flooding of the valley during the winter of 1996-1997. The Yosemite Valley Plan (NPS 2000) included plans to change traffic patterns, reduce congestion, and add a fleet of diesel and electric hybrid shuttles to reduce private car use in the park. As of today, more than 90% of visitors arrive to the park in their private auto- mobiles (NPS 2006). The single most popular activity when visiting Yosemite, cited by 87% of respondents, was "taking a scenic drive," and 60% of all visitors cited taking a scenic drive as the "primary activity" when visiting Yosemite. This is worth repeating—the majority of visitors to Yosemite say that scenic driving is their pri- mary activity in the park. Following scenic driving, the next most popular activities were going to the visitor center in Yosemite Valley (55%) and eating in a park res- taurant (49%). Less than half the respondents took a day hike, and only 3% took an overnight backpack trip. Once in Yosemite Valley, most visitors drive from one attraction site (e.g., Lower Yosemite Falls) to another (e.g., Bridal Veil Falls) in their private vehicles or take the free park shuttle bus while only relatively few walk or 804 Y. L. Youngs et al. bicycle. Thus, to understand how visitors experience the natural and cultural elements of the park it is necessary to consider how visitors move through, interact with, and negotiate the transportation system because it is this behavior, along with park management response, that co-produces the landscape. Yosemite National Park, Visitors, and the Transportation System To explore how contemporary visitors' perceive the transportation system in Yosemite National Park and the implications of these views for the meanings of the cultural landscape, we conducted semistructured interviews with a 160 visitors in August (n = 100) and October (n = 60) 2005. Visitors were interviewed at six loca- tions around Yosemite Valley and selected using a maximum variation sampling approach (Patton, 1990) that ensured diversity in prior experience, season of visit, day and overnight use, and modes of transportation used in the park. The interviews were digitally audio recorded, professionally transcribed, imported in QSR NVivo Version 6 (QSR International, Pty. Ltd: Melbourne, Australia), and the resulting qualitative data were analyzed using the approach outlined by Miles and Huberman (1994). A team-based strategy was used to develop a codebook (MacQueen et al. 1998) that included descriptive, pattern, and interpretive codes. Inter-rater reliability analyses demonstrated acceptable levels of agreement between multiple coders (>.90). To Drive, Ride, or Walk? How Visitors Choose to Travel in National Parks The initial goals of the analysis were to identify all factors that affect how visitors choose to travel through Yosemite Valley and to identify which factors were more or less influential for visitors in choosing among the most common travel modes (i.e., private vehicle, park shuttle bus, walking, or bicycling). Qualitative analysis revealed that individual factors could be categorized as: (a) situational influences of the park environment and transportation system, which included convenience, access, cost, congestion, educational opportunities, and route finding; and (b) individual characteristics and experiential factors, which included subjective perceptions of freedom, environmental values, motivation for socializing, solitude, accomplishment, and experience-use-history. Pattern coding revealed that convenience of the transpor- tation system was the single most commonly mentioned factor influencing visitors' travel choices overall and was particularly salient for visitors relying on personal vehicles; they mentioned convenience more than twice as often as any other factor. Visitors preferring private autos also valued freedom to go "where they want, when they want." One visitor summarized the view this way: "This is America, we use per- sonal vehicles. I think that's the preferred mode of travel and I think that they need to accommodate that." Meanwhile, visitors who chose to use alternative transportation (park shuttle, biking, and walking) placed greater emphasis on environmental values. Typical com- ments included, "Well definitely it's [shuttle] my alternative. I mean I'm someone who'd almost like to see no cars in Yosemite Valley to save on pollution... Environ- mental, yeah"; "You're cutting down on emissions"; "I've read that there was all sorts of problems with pollution here. And I think that's clean powered. So it's great"; and "So you don't destroy the park driving around." Visitors preferring alternative transportation also valued access. One visitor chose to walk "because Transportation Systems as Cultural Landscapes 805 we could go places that vehicles can't take you" and another said that "walking, versus just stopping or driving and looking out the window, well you could get places that are not accessible any other way—by bicycle or automobile or shuttle bus." Another visitor riding a bicycle said, "I never would have known we could go there in a car. Because now I see all these other little signs riding our bike as opposed to a car." This analysis also revealed that experience-use-history was related to travel mode choices. Specifically, there was a clear pattern where visitors with greater experience with Yosemite and other national parks with significant alternative trans- portation systems (e.g., Zion National Park, Denali National Park) tended to prefer the park shuttle, biking, or walking more frequently than those with less experience. Less experienced visitors by comparison tended to choose personal vehicles. Narrative, Counternarrative, and Contested Meanings Next, we examined the interview data for insights into the relationship between visi- tors' perspectives on travel and the social construction of the cultural landscape. We found that visitor demand for convenience, access, and freedom provided by personal vehicles, combined with the park service's historical accommodation of visitor demand through the development and design of the park transportation system, has produced a cultural landscape dominated by roads and automobiles and has cul- tivated a widely shared and scripted visitor experience, best described as a "travel narrative." The experience begins as visitors travel into the park landscape admiring the scenic beauty through their automobile windshields, occasionally stopping at scenic overlooks to take photographs as they descend to the developed areas of Yosemite Valley. A key event in the "story" of visiting Yosemite is the first glimpse of the Valley. When asked to describe their most significant or meaningful experience, visitors described the first view of the valley: "Just, you know, when we were coming down into the valley, that first glimpse of the valley. That was really spectacular. The view." Another visitor said, "I think the first time coming in the park, the overall, it's so overwhelming you know. You're actually here, you're not looking at a picture, you see it, you know and it's reality." For many who descend into the valley via the winding road from Wawona their first full view of the valley comes at the tunnel viewpoint. Speaking of the most memorable or significant experience, one visitor said, "The most memorable thing really is of course just seeing it, you know, driving in and going, 'oh my gosh,' this is so beautiful." Another said, "I mean, you know, coming out of the tunnel and seeing the whole valley," and another said, "Coming through the tunnel with the moonlight lighting up the full moon." Arriving in Yosemite Valley, most visitors emerge from their vehicles and enter a landscape framed by towering granite cliffs and waterfalls but still dominated at the human scale by the transportation system. Visitors encounter roads, automobiles, tour buses, park shuttle buses, bicycles, and trails leading from parking areas to visi- tor service areas, educational facilities, and trailheads. At this point, visitors may transition from their personal vehicles to other forms of transportation such as the free park shuttle bus. Although some visitors, especially newcomers, are confused by the routes, they are encouraged by park personnel and educational signs to leave their cars and ride the shuttle. For many, the shuttle frees them from the hassles of driving and allows them to enjoy the landscape. One visitor said of the shuttle, "Just 806 Y. L. Youngs et al. the scenery, how beautiful it is. Just the windows are bigger, you can see better. You know I think when you're driving you have a tendency to go a little bit faster so they're really slow and they stop." Another visitor said that the shuttle allowed him to "enjoy the scenery because you don't have to concentrate on driving on a road." Visitors riding the shuttle bus also described a sense of stewardship. One said, "It's just better for the environment, and it's better for traffic-wise. I mean yeah, we all drive, but it would be so much better for the park if, you know, there wasn't that much traffic." Another common component of the visitor experience related to the transpor- tation system is learning about the geology, history, and management of the park. Visitors described significant and memorable learning experiences that occurred while traveling though the park. One visitor said that she valued the bus for the information the driver provided: "This is the first year we've ever taken a tour bus. And like I say, we have been, I have come up since I was 9 years old, so I've been coming up here over 50 years. We found out information about the park that we've never known before. It was excellent." Another visitor said, "The guy talked ... this is good ... because we don't know what we're seeing. We are all sitting in one place and he explained the mountains and all, the Indians and all that stuff." Another visitor said, "Well, we were on the bus yesterday... when they told us that this is just one rock, all of this is like forty miles wide. No, eighty miles wide and four hundred miles long. It's just all one rock." Another visitor said, "It was really good because it was an educational thing as well. You know, this man talked all the way up and all the way down, so it was I mean he was really one of the best ones that I've ever, ever heard, so, you know, it was entertaining and educational." Another male visitor discussed learning about geology while traveling on the park shuttle bus: "There was something we didn't know, some trivial question ... Oh, El Capitan is the largest hunk of granite in the world." These excerpts highlight the fact that, for many visitors, learning about the park is done within the context of the transpor- tation system and the "educators" are likely to be concessionaire employees driving busses, as opposed to Park Service interpretive rangers. In this "story" of visiting Yosemite, visitors are carried by cars and shuttles through the park on roads, experiencing the park as a series of attractions as if they were touring through a theme park landscape (Young 2002). Visitors enter the val- ley, stop at scenic view pullouts, eat, find lodging in the valley, and "check off a prescribed list of attractions such as Yosemite Falls, then exit the valley for their homeward journey. Some visitors explicitly compare Yosemite Valley to a theme park: "I love, I mean considering there are so many thousands of visitors, it's like Disney really. They managed to keep it... I'm impressed with the people that look after it. I think they've done a brilliant job considering... you could be in Broadway in New York." Our interview results revealed that this description seems to fit a widely shared experience that is largely dependent on the transportation system, including roads, cars, and park shuttle busses. The interviews also revealed a counternarrative that, although less prominent, highlights the contested meaning of the transportation system in the cultural land- scape. In this counternarrative the roads, cars, and shuttle busses are intrusions into the park landscape that facilitate overdevelopment and overuse of the sensitive and pristine nature. The convenience and access of the transportation system, which are so valued in the dominant perspective, make visiting Yosemite "too easy" in the counternarrative. Interestingly, the theme park analogy emerged in this perspective Transportation Systems as Cultural Landscapes 807 as well, as some visitors derided the access and convenience provided by the transportation system, saying, "If they want to drive in their cars, go to Disneyland or something." Discussion Our findings support and build upon the work of Louter (2006), Young (2002), Dilsaver (1992), and Carr (1998), among others. This work sheds light on how both the National Park Service and visitors have willingly embraced roads and cars in national parks, which has led to a particular manifestation of cultural landscape and a choreographed and scripted visitor experience best defined as a travel narra- tive. Implicit in many of the interviews in our study was an acceptance by visitors of cars, and more recently shuttle busses, as consistent with nature preservation in national parks. Similarly, from the NPS perspective, roads, cars, and busses have been accepted and reconciled with ideals of wilderness preservation because roads have been designed and built so as to "harmonize" with the landscape. This brings into sharp relief the early NPS view of nature as a scenic and visual resource rather than an ecological one. In Yosemite, as in other national parks, roads "function as scenic corridors and scenic narratives, making it possible to think of automobiles not just as an acceptable way of seeing national parks but perhaps the best way" (Louter 2006, 19). A less prominent counternarrative emerged that contested the dominant social construction of the transportation system. This process of reconciling nature preservation with roads, cars, and busses is not without its tensions, felt by both visitors and managers alike. These tensions may be traced to changing notions of the role and place of cars in national parks. Louter (2006) argued that "the acceptance of autos in national parks in the first fif- teen years of the twentieth century embodied the optimistic belief that nature and technology were mutually beneficial... In the early twentieth century, those notions centered on parks increasingly as places for outdoor recreation, enclaves of nature to be reached by and known through machines" (165). As we move into the 21st century the park service is encouraging visitors to Yosemite, as well as other parks such as Zion and the Grand Canyon, to travel via alternative transportation, including shuttle buses. In a sense, this represents a movement to go "back to the future" by encouraging visitors to give up their private automobiles and engage in group travel the way earlier visitors rode trains and stagecoaches. Our findings provide mixed support for the potential success of such policies. On one hand, visitors clearly value the convenience, access, and sense of freedom provided by their cars. From the time of the production of the Model T Ford through the post-World World II boom years, cars have sym- bolized democracy and freedom in American culture. Similarly, auto access to national parks symbolizes the democratization of the park preservation and out- door recreation movements. And, based upon our interviews with Yosemite visi- tors, the prototypical park experience relies heavily on cars and roads to present and frame the natural scenery story. On the other hand, however, our interviews showed that visitors have concerns about the impact of auto tourism on the natu- ral environment of the park. Given the more general public attention to global climate change and efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, there is reason to believe that park visitors, like Americans more broadly, will be increasingly reflective about the impact of their transportation choices on the environment. 808 Y. L. Youngs et al. Also, our interviews revealed that visitors are aware of the physical limitations of parks to accommodate automobile traffic. In addition to informing cultural landscape studies, this research has implica- tions for park education and interpretation designed to influence visitors' expecta- tions and behaviors. Historical routes of tourist travel persist in the park today. Modern visitors travel along the Arch Rock Entrance route that railroad passengers took in stagecoaches almost a hundred years ago. The Big Oak Flat Entrance is close to the junction of the old Big Oak Flat Road that many visitors traveled as they took in their first views of the park. The visitor experience at Yosemite National Park, however, runs deeper into history than routes and road conditions can relay. There are some similarities between historic visitor travel into the park and modern-day travel that may serve the park well as it heads into another phase of its transpor- tation planning and management. For most of the park's history, travel into and around the park was done in groups such as stagecoach tours and automobile tours. The entrance of private automobiles changed the transportation geography of the park, but the experiences of group travel are still available to visitors today. Over time, views about group travel have also shifted, and modern visitors to the park do not embrace collective travel with the same attitudes as early visitors. One scholar has commented that "Yosemite Valley is not so much the abandoned wilderness as a landscape that has been gradually modified over time until it has reached a point that no longer coincides with its public image" (Melnick 2000, 30). To better understand this uneasy disjuncture between the landscapes at hand, along with the public image of how the landscape should look and function, we can use some of the findings from this study to explore modern visitor experiences and behaviors in the park. This will help to improve suggestions for park interpreta- tion and communication, for instance; interpretation could highlight the history of alternative transportation in the parks; shuttle bus signage could include historic photographs and quotes from early park visitors that highlight the history of alter- native transportation before and after the advent of auto tourism. Early stagecoach tours, railroad routes, and touring auto coaches potentially can provide memorable experiences for many 19th- and 20th-century park visitors. Building upon this his- tory, the NPS should encourage positive attitudes toward alternative transportation options in Yosemite, trading on the nostalgic images, and promote a sense of stewardship among visitors. Conclusion Transportation systems, including roads, cars, and busses, provide access for mil- lions of Americans to their national parks. These ubiquitous but often unexamined features of the cultural landscape mediate the relationship between people and the scenery they come to appreciate. Rather than being seen as an intrusion, visitors and park managers have come to view transportation systems as embedded compo- nents of the landscape that allow visitors to view wilderness while driving. As Louter (2002, 165) observed, "To say that cars destroyed the primitive values that national parks were intended to protect, then, overlooks this equally essential meaning of national parks." The case of Yosemite Valley shows us how the transportation sys- tem provides the setting for a travel narrative in which the national park unfolds as a series of beautiful but fleeting scenes outside the car windows. Transportation Systems as Cultural Landscapes 809 References Anable, J. and B. Gatersleben. 2005. All work and no play? The role of instrumental and affective factors in work and leisure journeys by different travel modes. Transport. Res. A Policy Pract. 39(2-3): 163-181. Barringer, M. D. 2002. Selling Yellowstone: Capitalism and the construction of nature. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press. Barnett, G. 2004. Drive-by viewing—Visual consciousness and forest preservation in the auto- mobile age. Technol. Culture 45(l):30-54. Cao, X. Y. and P. L. Mokhtarian. 2005. How do individuals adapt their personal travel? A conceptual exploration of the consideration of travel-related strategies. Transport Policy 12(3):199-206. Carr, E. 1998. Wilderness by design: Landscape architecture and the National Park Service. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Colten, C. E. and L. M. Dilsaver. 2005. The hidden landscape of Yosemite National Park. /. Cultural Geogr. 22(2):27-50. Cosgrove, D. 1984. Social formation and symbolic landscape. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Cosgrove, D. and S. Daniels. 1988. The iconography of landscape. New York: Cambridge University Press. Cronon, W. 2003. The riddle of the Apostle Islands: How do you manage a wilderness full of human stories? Orion May/June: 36^-2. Daigle, J.J. and C. A. Zimmerman. 2004. The convergence of transportation, information technology, and visitor experience at Acadia National Park. /. Travel Res. 43(2): 151-160. Dilsaver, L. M. 1992. Stemming the flow: The evolution of controls on visitor numbers and impact in national parks. In The American environment: Interpretations of past geogra- phies, eds. L. M. Dilsaver and C. Colten, 235-255. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Little- field. Dilsaver, L. M. and C. E. Colten. 1992. The American environment: Interpretations of past geographies, Geographical perspectives on the human past. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Dilsaver, L. M. and W. Wyckoff. 1999. Agency culture, cumulative causation and develop- ment in Glacier National Park, Montana. /. Hist. Geogr. 25(l):75-92. Dilsaver, L. M. 2004. Cumberland Island National Seashore: A history of conservation conflict. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. Dilworth, V. A. 2003. Visitor perceptions of alternative transportation systems and intelligent transportation systems in national parks. Dissertation, Department of Parks, Recreation, and Tourism Sciences, Texas A&M University, College Station. Evans, G. W. and S. Carrere. 1991. Traffic congestion, perceived control and psychophysio- logical stress among urban bus drivers. /. Appl. Psychol. 76(5):658-663. Francaviglia, R. 1994. Elusive land: Changing geographic images of the Southwest. In Essays on the changing images of the Southwest, eds. R. Francaviglia, D. Narrett, and B. Narramore, 8-39. College Station: Texas A&M University Press. Germic, S. 2001. American green: Class, crisis, and the deployment of nature in Central Park, Yosemite, and Yellowstone. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Greene, L. 1987. Historic Resource Study. Yosemite: the park and its resources. A history of discovery, management, and physical development of Yosemite National Park, California, Volume 1 of 3. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service. Havlick, D. G. 2002. No place diitant: Roads and motorized recreation on America's public lands. Washington, DC: Island Press. Hart, J. F. 1998. The rural landscape. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. 810 Y. L. Youngs et al. Iso-Ahola, S. E. 1980. The social psychology of leisure and recreation. Dubuque, IA: W. C. Brown. Iso-Ahola, S. E. 1983. Towards a social psychology of recreational travel. Leisure Stud. 2:45-56. Jackson, J. 1984. The word itself. In Discovering the vernacular landscape, ed. J. Jackson, 1-8. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Jakle, J. 1985. The tourist: Travel in twentieth-century North America. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Laube, M. M. and R. W. Stout. 2000. Grand Canyon National Park—Assessment of trans- portation alternatives. Transit Plan. Intermodal Facilities Manage. Market. 1735:59-69. Lewis, P. 1979. Axioms for reading the landscape: Some guides to the American scene. In The interpretation of ordinary landscapes, ed. D. Meinig, 11-32. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Louter, D. 2006. Windshield wilderness: Cars, roads, and nature in Washington's national parks. Seattle: University of Washington Press. MacQueen, K. M., E. McLellan, K. Kay, and B. Milstein. 1998. Codebook development for team-based qualitative analysis. CAM Cultural Anthropol. Methods J. 10(2):31—36. Mason, K. 2004. Natural museums: U.S. National Parks, 1872-1916. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press. McClelland, L. 1998. Building the national parks: Historic landscape design and architecture. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Meinig, D. 1988. The shaping of America: Geographical perspective on 500 years of history, Vol. 1, Atlantic America 1492-1800. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Melnick, R. Z. 2000. Considering nature and culture in historic landscape preservation. n Preserving cultural landscapes in America, ed. A. Alanen and R. Melnick, 22-A~i. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press. Miles, M. B. and A. M. Huberman. 1994. Qualitative data analysis, 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Mokhtarian, P. L. and I. Salomon. 2001. How derived is the demand for travel. Some conceptual and measurement considerations. Transport. Res. A 35:695-719. Morgan, J. N. 1985. The impact of travel costs on visits to U.S. national parks: Intermodal shifting among Grand Canyon visitors. /. Travel Res. 24(3):23-28. National Park Service. 1990. Yosemite: A guide to Yosemite National Park California. Handbook 138. Washington, DC: National Park Service. National Park Service. 2000. Final Yosemite Valley plan/Supplemental environmental impact statement, Yosemite National Park, CA: National Park Service. National Park Service. 2006. Yosemite National Park visitor study summer 2005 (No. 168). Moscow, ID: NPS Park Studies Unit. National Park Service. 2007. Public use statistics office [accessed October 2007]. Available from http://www2.nature.nps.gov/stats/ O'Brien, B. 1966. The future road system of Yellowstone National Park. Ann. Assoc. Am. Geogr. 56(3):385^107. Olwig, K. R. 2001. Landscape as contested topos of place, community, and self. In Textures of place: Exploring humanist geographies, eds. P. Adams, S. Hoelscher, and K. Till, 93-117. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Patterson, M. E., A. E. Watson, D. R. Williams, and J. R. Roggenbuck. 1998. An hermeneutic approach to studying the nature of wilderness experiences. /. Leisure Res. 30(4):423^-52. Patton, M. Q. (1990). Qualitative evaluation and research methods. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Pritchard, P. 1999. Preserving Yellowstone's natural conditions: Science and the perception of nature. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Runte, A. 1990. Yosemite: The embattled wilderness. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Runte, A. 1997. National parks: The American experience, 3rd ed. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Transportation Systems as Cultural Landscapes 811 Sauer, C. O. 1925. The morphology of landscape. Berkeley: University of California Press. Schein, R. H. 1997. The place of landscape: A conceptual framework for interpreting an American scene. Ann. Assoc. Am. Geogr. 87(4):660-680. Schwantes, C. A. 2001. No aid and no comfort: Early transportation and the origins of tourism in the northern west. In Seeing and being seen: Tourism and the American West, eds. D. M. Wrobel and P. L. Long, 125-142. Lawrence: University of Kansas. Schullery, P. 1997. Searching for Yellowstone: Ecology and wonder in the last wilderness. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Sellars, R. W. (1997). Preserving nature in the national parks: A history. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Shaffer, M. S. 2001. See America first: Tourism and national identity, 1880-1940. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Shiftan, Y., D. Vary, and D. Geyer. 2006. Demand for park shuttle services—A stated- preference approach. /. Transport Geogr. 14(l):52-59. Sims, C. B., D. G. Hodges, J. M. Fly, and B. Stephens. 2005. Modeling acceptance of a shuttle system in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. /. Park Recreation Admin. 23(3):25-44. Steg, L., C. Vlek, and G. Slotegraaf. 2001. Instrumental-reasoned and symbolic-affective motives for using a motor car. Transport. Res. F 4:151-169. Stradling, S. G., M. L. Meadows, and S. Beatty. 1999. Identity and independence: Two dimen- sions of driver autonomy. In Behavioural research in road safety X, ed. G. B. Grayson, 7-20. Crowthorne, U.K.: Transport Research Laboratory. Tuan, Y. 1974. Topophilia: A study of environmental perception, attitudes, and values. Engle- wood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Vale, T. R. 2005. The American wilderness: Reflections on nature protection in the United States. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. Williams, J. H. 1914. Yosemite and its High Sierra. San Francisco, CA: J. H. Williams. Wyckoff, W. and L. M. Dilsaver. 1997. Promotional imagery of Glacier National Park. Geogr. Rev. 87(1): 1-26. Young, T. 2002. Virtue and irony in a U.S. national parks. In Theme park landscapes: Antecedents and variations, eds. T. Young and R. B. Riley, 157-181. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.