How is it that America's national parks came to be so popular? Tourism began as an activity for wealthy Europeans during the latter part of the 17th century, at a time when European landscape panters kindled a widespread interest in mountain scenery.

Their patrons left the cities in search of "picturesque" views, following prescribed routes so that they could mentally frame lakes, waterfalls, and rugged peaks as an artist would in a picture. Tours to the Swiss Alps and the English Lake District became popular because these areas were the haunt of panters whose work utilized violent contrasts of light and shade, turbulent colors, and irregular forms.

By the mid-nineteenth century, Americans were joining the search for the picturesque. The wealthy followed their counterparts around Europe, even though landscape painters were beginning to romanticize North American scenery. Businessmen in this country soon saw that leisure travel could be lucrative, if only they could reverse the flow of tourist dollars. At the forefront of the commercial interest were the railroads, especially ones whose lines were being extended across the western states and territories.

Landscape painters and photographers were hired to promote the spectacular scenery along the rail routes and lure tourists away from Europe. The newly established national parks like Yellowstone, Yosemite, Mount Rainier, and Crater Lake featured prominently in rail advertising by 1900, but many Americans continued to spend their summers in mountain resorts across the Atlantic. This began to change when the Great Northern Railway adopted the "See America First" slogan in 1906 to promote their budding resort facilities in northern Montana.

The slogan was suggested by the railroad's official photographer, Fred Kiser. Some of his work was subsequently exhibited at the U.S. Capitol and allowed the railroad to secure passage of a bill establishing Glacier National Park.

Although Glacier owed its existence to "See America First", European resorts furnished the models for tourist accommodations. Hotels and cabins built by the Great Northern copied Swiss architecture while the railroad's employees in the park donned costumes recalling the Alps. Similar facilities appeared in other national parks and helped to popularize them.

As the railroads stepped up their promotions and automobile roads were built to facilitate tourist travel, national park visitation grew rapidly. "See America First" soon became a rallying cry for a coalition of civic and conservation groups who saw national parks as the best use of the country's greatest scenic assets. These organizations saw the split in administrative responsibility among the interior, agriculture, and war departments as detrimental to tourism and urged that one bureau manage all of the national parks.

Bills to create a "national park service" were introduced to Congress in 1911 and 1913, but success came only when World War I restricted European travel. On August 25, 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed legislation creating the National Park Service in the Department of Interior.

The new bureau was headed by millionaire businessman Stephen Mather, a man who knew that his agency's survival hinged on encouraging visitors to come to America's national parks. Consequently, the National Park Service borrowed many of the promotional methods employed by the railroads. Many of these are still in use. Can you think of any?

One of the early national park photographers left a lasting legacy at Crater Lake. He was Fred Kiser, who built a small studio at Rim Village in 1921. This building still serves as Crater Lake's main visitor center during the summer.

A trip to the newly established Crater Lake National Park in 1903 launched Kiser's career. Not only did he and his brother Oscar take the first picture of the lake on a single photographic plate, they also enlarged several views and hand-colored them in oil. This was the first time that the oil coloring process had been used in the United States for mass production, and it quickly became a Kiser trademark.

Fred bought out his brother's share of the business and became the official photographer for the 1905 Lewis and Clark Exposition in Portland, Oregon. The popularity of his photos induced the Great Northern Railway to make him their official photographer the following year. Kiser served in that capacity until 1912, by which time he was regarded as probably the leading landscape photographer in the Pacific Northwest.

Kiser's photographic expeditions throughout the Cascade Range added to his notoriety. In 1919, he was the first to blaze the Skyline Trail, much of which is now Oregon's part of the Pacific Crest Trail. By 1922, Kiser expanded his Portland based Scenic America Company to include several branch studios. As a result, his operation overextended itself and he had to declare bankruptcy in 1927. After one attempt at reorganization, Kiser sold his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1932.

This brochure was produced for a special exhibit celebrating the 75th anniversary of the National Park Service in 1991. This exhibit was on display at Crater Lake National Park that year. This brochure was published by the National Park Service with funding from the Crater Lake Natural History Association, 1991. Photograph of Fred Kiser courtesy of the Oregon Historical Society.

12/26/2001 rdp