Master of Arts

thesisDuring the early history of the National Parks, park managers throughout the United States developed communication networks within perceived spaces of wilderness in order to manage and tame the wildness of the landscape. Communication technologies connected remote locations within the National Parks to towns and cities hundreds of miles away, and made the solitude found in places of wilderness far less dangerous. With the development of advanced methods of communication like the telegraph and telephone, along with the help of trails, railroads, and paved roads, communication technologies allowed nineteenth and twentieth century tourists to experience sublime nature without disconnecting themselves from the safety and comfort of direct communication with the "outside world." By eliminating the necessity to travel through nature in order to communicate over long distances, the telegraph and telephone directly impacted the way people experienced and thought about nature during the nineteenth and twentieth century, and contributed to a more tame and controlled wilderness experience. My research explores the development of communication technologies in several National Parks throughout the American West in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The correspondence of early park superintendents, along with the experiences of early visitors to the parks provides an invaluable look into the impact of communication technologies on the perception of wilderness in the early history of the National Parks, and the role they played in managing the landscape. This brief exploration is the first in what deserves to be an extensive examination of the historical impact of communication technologies on the human experience in nature, the search for the Romantic sublime, and the role that communication has had in the perceived dualism between wilderness and civilization in the history of the United States