Industrial tourism is the process by which an attraction like a national park is developed and modernized in order to make the location more appealing and accessible for tourists. Industrial tourism is a lucrative endeavor for the government and construction firms, as it brings thousands of motorists through America’s national parks. By building roads, modern camping facilities, ticket booths, and the like, the National Park Service makes tourists’ visits more comfortable and can then charge them higher admission rates. To Abbey, industrial tourism is the enemy of wilderness and a real threat to human rights. He believes that the tourist industry destroys wilderness to make an enormous profit, and in doing so, it deprives humans of an essential escape from the stressors of city life. The end result is an overly dense, car-addicted population that the government can easily control. In the American West, industrial tourism also encroaches upon local groups like the Navajo, cowboys, and Mormons, depriving them of their preferred ways of life.
Industrial Tourism Quotes in Desert Solitaire
The Desert Solitaire quotes below are all either spoken by Industrial Tourism or refer to Industrial Tourism. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Polemic
Quotes
It will be objected that a constantly increasing population makes resistance and conservation a hopeless battle. This is true. Unless a way is found to stabilize the nation’s population, the parks cannot be saved. Or anything else worth a damn. Wilderness preservation, like a hundred other good causes, will be forgotten under the overwhelming pressure of a struggle for mere survival and sanity in a completely urbanized, completely industrialized, ever more crowded environment.
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No more new roads in national parks. […] Once people are liberated from the confines of automobiles there will be a greatly increased interest in hiking, exploring, and back-country packtrips.
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Industrial Tourism Term Timeline in Desert Solitaire
The timeline below shows where the term Industrial Tourism appears in Desert Solitaire. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Polemic: Industrial Tourism and the National Parks
...Coke machines, and modern bathrooms, the hordes of new tourists comprise a wave of “ Industrial Tourism .”
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...Abbey notes that most tourists are too lazy to leave their cars. This laziness allows Industrial Tourism to prey on their dependence: because tourists think they need cars, people will say that...
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Cowboys and Indians, Part II
However, some Navajos do benefit from the influx of money brought by industrial park tourism . But more highways—however lucrative they may be—ultimately demean the people further, forcing Navajos to...
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