As the parking lot in front of our Re/Max First office fills with out of state license plates, I’ve been continually surprised by the distance which some folks travel to come play tourist in our very remote city on the hill. Not that all out of state cars belong to tourists. We have quite a variety of residents here in Los Alamos. I’ve worked with buyers from cities on almost every continent at this point. Our National Laboratory recruits minds from all over the globe in the name of scientific collaboration. But post docs, visiting scientists, and guest lecturers don’t generally have the same look as your run of the mill tourist.

Sure. Tourism here in Los Alamos got a boost from the recent Oppenheimer film. But I started thinking about tourism in general. When I was reading some research materials for last week’s blog post about Camp Hamilton, I ran across a reference to something called the “See America First!” campaign. This campaign was said to have helped the original owner/operator of Camp Awanyu (later Camp Hamilton) grow his business offering automobile tours of the Pajarito Plateau. So, I started looking around for what this “See America First!” campaign was all about.

Turns out it isn’t necessarily called that. The campaign was more of a movement, and the timing was heavily influenced by the Panama-California (also called Panama Pacific) Exposition in 1915. The Exposition was a 600 acre fair that covered 2.5 miles of San Francisco waterfront to celebrate the completion of the Panama Canal. But that’s on the West Coast. In the early 1900s a LOT of our population was mostly centered on the East Coast and in the South.

The OTHER thing going on was the expansion of a National Highways and Byways system. Most of us are familiar with Route 66. We also see plenty of signs in the Santa Fe area about the National Historic Roadways or National Historic Trails because the Santa Fe Trail is a pretty big deal in American History, right? In 1912, The National Old Trails Road, also known as the Ocean-to-Ocean Highway. It was 3,096 miles long and stretched from the New York City/Baltimore, Maryland area to San Franciso, California. Eventually this “official” roadway was decommissioned and the Western portion became part of Route 66. Looking at the map below (you can find a version of this map HERE), it becomes pretty obvious why Camp Awanyu and the Pajarito Plateau became a great place to stop and see the wild and beautiful scenery of the Southern Rocky Mountains. There’s literally nothing else around!

Something else that drives tourists up the winding switchbacks of our Main Hill is the very long habit of people living in the US to plan domestic vacations. If you spend much time talking to folks from outside the US, you’ll find that they take their “holidays” in countries other than their own. When Americans leave the Lower 48, it seems like they’re usually headed to Alaska or Hawaii. A lot of that has to do with timing and geography. The United States is HUGE! You could spend a lifetime traveling inside our borders without seeing it all. Many Americans never bothered with a passport and plenty of Americans have lived and died in this country without ever having one.

I was rather surprised to learn that part of the “See America First!” campaign was literally designed to make that a long standing American tradition. According to Marguerite Schaffer’s book, “See America First: Tourism and National Identity, 1880-1940”, there was a growing trend of “upper middle class” folks having enough time and income to travel. As you can imagine, it became a concern of railroad owners, car makers, and domestic businesses that Americans would use their leisure time and money to travel to Europe. A marketing campaign got rolling and then the Parks Service got involved in 1920 when advertising began to convince the general public that National Parks were also a National Asset.

Considering Los Alamos is a small town literally stranded in the middle of three enormous National Parks, I suppose WE are also a National Asset. Not that any of us had a doubt…

This idea of traveling within the continental United States was said to promote nationalism and a sense of American identity. But the widespread ownership of cars took that concept to the next level! Instead of going on a train to a specific destination, driving your own car to a vacation destination allows you to experience a new place in unique ways. You see parts of the rural countryside you’d never see if you were headed to a train station. The same holds true for air travel. Have you ever “flown through” a city without actually experiencing any of the local flavor? It’s hard for us to imagine what it would have been like to have NEVER driven your own car through a rural town or viewed sights like the wind turbines and oil rigs all over Texas and Oklahoma from the window of your family car or van.

Put in this context, it seems obvious that a place like Camp Awanyu would become a hot vacation destination in the early 1900s. It must have been like a trip to Mars for those East Coast visitors. Riding in an open seven passenger vehicle up the twisting road to Buckman Mesa before climbing all over prehistoric ruins? I can’t begin to imagine how cool that must’ve been! Probably just a shade cooler than it is now.

Visitors and tourists come to Los Alamos everyday, but some of us have the opportunity to enjoy everyday life here in Los Alamos! When you’re ready to chat about buying or selling your dream home in Los Alamos, give me a call!