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Book Review
| All Aboard for Santa Fe: Railway Promotion of the Southwest, 1890s to 1930s. By Victoria E. Dye. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005. xi + 163 pp. Illustrations, appendices, notes, bibliography, index. $24.95.)
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If an MVP (Most Valuable Promoter) award were given to the person, organization, or company most responsible for putting Santa Fe on the map of American tourist destinations, Victoria Dye would have us believe that the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad should win hands down. Her book argues that the promotional efforts of the AT&SF, more than anything else, rescued a backwater town from oblivion and transformed it into a flourishing tourist mecca. As a paean to these efforts, the book succeeds. As an historical study of tourism and transformation in the Southwest, the book suffers from significant flaws. |
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Dye's book, a revision of her master's thesis, stands apart from a growing body of scholarship that focuses critical attention on Edgar Hewett, Charles Lummis, and others who defined the modern Southwest by appropriating and inventing traditions such as the Hopi Snake Dance, the Santa Fe Fiesta, and Santa Fe Style. The book also stands apart from scholarship that questions the impact of tourism on national identities, regional economies, and local cultures. Dye claims a much narrower purpose: "to investigate how ... the AT&SF promoted Santa Fe, New Mexico, from 1880 to the beginning of World War II, and to what extent this effort was successful" (p. 2). In four short chapters, Dye races through the history of Santa Fe and then surveys the AT&SF's promotional strategies through the 1930s. A fifth chapter offers a comparative look at the promotion of Albuquerque, though the lessons of this comparison remain underdeveloped. The final chapter celebrates Santa Fe's maintenance of its status as "a nationally recognized tourist destination"—a status achieved "thanks to the foundation laid by ... the Santa Fe Railroad" (p. 99). |
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This book might best be described as a labor of love. For Dye, as for generations of promoters and tourists, Santa Fe is an uncomplicated place that is easy to admire. According to Dye, Santa Fe's history is "extraordinary," its landscape "enchanting," and its beauty "breathtaking" (pp. 3, 5, 10). The AT&SF helped publicize and preserve Santa Fe's "charm and quaintness" (p. 84). Thus, Santa Fe remains "the City Different" (p. 100). Yet such affection impedes Dye's ability to recognize the ways in which qualities such as "quaintness" have been used to perpetuate social inequalities, and it dissuades her from probing the nature of tourists' attraction to such qualities. |
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All Aboard for Santa Fe does little to advance scholarship on western tourism and its impact. Thus, the book will hold interest primarily for scholars and students seeking a quick introduction to the promotion of a city that remains, for better or worse, the Southwest's premier tourist destination. |
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| Raymond W. Rast
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| The College of Wooster |
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ISSN 1939-8603
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