1. Anyone beginning serious study of the artifacts associated with Touristicus Americanus must start by paying tribute to MacCannell, Dean, The Tourist, A New Theory of the Leisure Class (New York: Schocken Books, 1976), esp. pp. 156–160Google Scholar. In this instance, however, I must also thank the group of graduate students and young colleagues from the Departments of Art History, American Studies, and Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota with whom I organized a series of two sessions on tourism and souvenirs delivered at the combined annual meeting of the Popular Culture Association and the American Culture Association, held in Toronto in March of 1984. They are Sue Beckham, Joe Bensen, Bob Gambone, Chris Levenduski, Colleen Sheehy, Rob Silberman, and Jean Spraker. Sue Kendall discussed her parallel research at a subsequent American Studies Association meeting. This essay is based on my Toronto paper, some of the conclusions of which are reported in Fink, David, “Souvenirs: Lifeblood of USA Tourism,” USA TODAY (06 4, 1984), pp. 1–2BGoogle Scholar.Jakle, John A.'s The Tourist (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985)Google Scholar appeared after our research was completed.

For tourism and its strange vehicular consequences in America, see Rockland, Michael Aaron, Homes on Wheels (New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers University Press, 1980), esp. pp. 9–13.Google Scholar

2. For the traditional partition of the state by the Minnesota State Tourism Division into a number of regions with such fetching titles as “Hiawathaland,” “Vikingland,” “Pioneerland,” etc., see Stavig, Vicki, ed., Minnesota Guide (Minneapolis: Dorn Books, 1982), pp. 8 and 144–5Google Scholar. The “Explore Minnesota” campaign was launched in 1983–84 under the auspices of Lt. Gov. Marlene Johnson; I discussed the program with Ms. Johnson at a luncheon meeting in May of 1984. The table was adorned with a bowl of “Explore Minnesota” sugar packets.

3. Bensen, Joe, “The Look-See Syndrome,” Minnesota Daily (10 26, 1983), pp. 8–9Google Scholar.

For a detailed treatment of the colossi of Minnesota, see Marling, Karal Ann, The Colossus of Roads, Myth and Symbol Along the American Highway (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984).Google Scholar

4. See Bush, Virginia, The Colossal Sculpture of the Cinquecento (New York: Garland Publishing, 1976), pp. 11 and 88–92.Google Scholar

5. For a discussion of the Colossus of Rhodes in a modern and specifically American context, see Trachtenberg, Marvin, The Statue of Liberty (London: Penguin Books, 1976), esp. pp. 112–13 and 117Google Scholar; for a discussion of the ancient colossi generally known of during and after the Renaissance, see Haskell, Francis and Penny, Nicholas, Taste and the Antique, The Lure of Classical Sculpture, 1500–1900 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1982), pp. 258–9, 272–3, and passim.Google Scholar

6. The concept of liminality comes from Victor Turner, of course, in this case via Delattre, Roland A., “The Rituals of Humanity and the Rhythms of Reality,” Prospects: An Annual of American Cultural Studies, vol. 5, Salzman, Jack, ed. (New York: Burt Franklin, 1980), esp. pp. 42–3.Google Scholar

7. For diminutive copies of the Phidian Athena, see Pollitt, J. J., Art and Experience in Classical Greece (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1972), pp. 98–9Google Scholar; for the famous marble copy now in the collection of the National Museum of Athens known as the Varvakeion Statuette, see Barron, John, Greek Sculpture (London: Studio Vista, 1965)Google Scholar, illustration on p. 86. I am grateful to Professor Walter C. Leedy, Jr., of the Department of Art, Cleveland State University, for directing my attention to these ancient “souvenirs” during my lecture there on more modern examples of the type in May of 1984.

8. Several American painters of the nineteenth century devoted particular attention to the allied themes of travel and memory, producing works that are, in some odd sense, souvenirs of both travel and states of mind. Of great interest is Vedder, Elihu's Memory of 1870Google Scholar, an image of a strange, disembodied head hovering over the waves of the sea, and LaFarge, John's The Strange Thing Little Kiosai Saw in the River of 1897Google Scholar, a remarkably similar picture, albeit the latter purportedly relates directly to a story the painter heard in Japan. In any case, these are scarcely National Geographic renditions of trips. The painters instead try to capture the aura of feeling peculiar to memories and recollections. See Davidson, Abraham A., The Eccentrics and Other American Visionary Painters (New York: Dutton, 1978), pp. 83–7.Google Scholar

9. See the steel engraving after a work by Bartlett, W. H. from American Scenery (1840)Google Scholar in Moritz, Albert F., America the Picturesque in Nineteenth Century Engraving (Toronto: New Trend Publishers, 1983)Google Scholar, plate 23 and commentary, pp. 158–9. American Scenery was a kind of armchair compendium of tourist views, in which. Niagara and the Tomb of Washington figured prominently. The text accompanying an engraving comments in detail on the trees, noting that the oaks, when they give up their leaves in the fall, furnish “the most appropriate drapery for the place, and … a still deeper impression to the memento mori” whereas the evergreen boughs of the cedar, in contrast to that decay of the body, become an “emblem of the immortal spirit.”

10. Fanciful images of the Tomb of Washington served as symbols for national unity and thus as marks of stability in the troubled decades before the Civil War; see, for example, the decoration of the famous Lady Washington, a fire pumper built in 1832 by James Smith for the Martha Washington Fire Company of New York, showing Liberty as a mourning figure crowning a bust of Washington with a wreath of 13 stars. This remarkable object is in the collection of the Adirondack Museum in Blue Mountain Lake, New York. I am grateful to my friend, James Gearity, for bringing the pumper to my attention.

For the meaning and incidence of such mourning images, see Schorsch, Anita, “A Key to the Kingdom, The Iconography of a Mourning Picture,” Winterthur Portfolio, 14, No. 1 (Spring, 1979), esp. p. 52 ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar. Death has traditionally been described in travel metaphors, of course. One of the most dramatic of these images is the apotheosis, in which the deceased is literally carried upward into the heavens, as Washington frequently is on transfer-printed ceramics and Chinese-made glass reverse paintings made and sold in the years just after 1799.

11. For Philadelphia, New York and Chicago souvenirs, see Klapthor, Margaret Brown and Morrison, Howard Alexander, George Washington, A Figure Upon the Stage (Washington, D.C.: The Smithsonian Institution Press, 1982), pp. 28–31 and 38–9Google Scholar, and Horwitz, Elinor Lander, The Bird, the Banner, and Uncle Sam, Images of America in Folk and Popular Art (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1976), pp. 21–2Google Scholar and passim. See also Weymouth, Lally, America in 1876 (New York: Vintage Books, 1976).Google Scholar

12. See the illustrations in Walther, Gary, “Niagara Souvenirs: One Man's Love Affair with Kitsch,” Smithsonian, 14, No. 10 (01, 1984), p. 106–111.Google Scholar

13. I am grateful to Paul L. Holmer, Jr., of New Haven, Connecticut, the foremost collector of silken souvenirs of the Great War, for sharing his remarkable collection and his ideas with me.

14. See xOuelette, William, Fantasy Postcards (New York: Doubleday, 1975)Google Scholar, esp. Plate 25 and commentary and Ryan, Dorothy B., Picture Postcards in the United States, 1893–1918 (New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1982), esp. p. 59Google Scholar, discussion of the advertising postcard distributed at the Panama-Pacific Exposition of 1915 showing a giant (28,000 pounds) Underwood typewriter.

15. Graburn, Nelson H. H., “Tourism: The Sacred Journey,” in Smith, Valene L., ed., Hosts and Guests, The Anthropology of Tourism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1977), p. 29.Google Scholar

16. For the Heinz Pier, see Funnell, Charles E., By the Beautiful Sea, The Rise and High Times of That Great American Resort, Atlantic City (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1983), esp. pp. 36 and 59.Google Scholar

17. Fussell, Paul, Abroad, British Literary Traveling Between the Wars (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), p. 167Google Scholar, in a long and penetrating digression about a modern tall-tale postcard from California showing giant berries, cites Roger Welsch's Tall-Tale Postcards (1976) for the early dating of the genre. Morgan, Hal, Big Time: American Tall-Tale Postcards (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1981)Google Scholar, unpaginated, suggests that production stayed high and was concentrated in the Midwest.

18. Harris, Neil, Humbug, The Art of P.T. Barnum (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), pp. 71–2Google Scholar makes this point about the outrageous (i.e. overscaled) hoaxes that delighted and plagued the 19th century.

19. For photographic evidence, see Ives, Halsey C., intro., The Dream City, a Portfolio of Photographic Views of the World's Columbian Exposition (St. Louis, Missouri: N.D. Thompson Publishing Company, 1893)Google Scholar, esp. unpaginated plate caption entitled “Arab Spearmen of the Wild East Show.”

20. Campbell, Hannah, “Why Did They Name It… ?” (New York: Ace Books, 1964), p. 161Google Scholar and Rowsome, Frank Jr., The Verse By the Side of the Road, The Story of the Burma-Shave Signs and Jingles (Brattleboro, Vt.: Stephen Green Press, 1965), esp. p. 19.Google Scholar

21. Fact Book, Green Giant Company (08, 1966), p. 5Google Scholar; Green Giant Company, Annual Report, Fiscal Year Ending March 31, 1951 (1951), p. 14Google Scholar; and Annual Report, Green Giant Company, Fiscal Year Ended March 31, 1963 (1963), p. 2Google Scholar. These are all pamphlets that served as corporate annual reports.

22. See Dorson, Richard M., “Told at the Paul Bunyan Winter Carnival,” from Western Folklore (1956)Google Scholar, quoted in Coffin, Tristram Potter and Cohen, Hennig, eds., The Parade of Heroes, Legendary Figures in American Lore (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press, 1978), p. 603.Google Scholar

23. See Hoffman, Daniel, Paul Bunyan, Last of the Frontier Demigods (New York: Columbia University Press, 1966), esp. pp. 81–2.Google Scholar

24. Clepper, P. M., “The Real, Unvarnished, Unexpected, Hitherto Suppressed, Almost-Never-Before-Revealed Secret Truth About Paul Bunyan,” Northliner Magazine, 3, No. 1 (Winter, 1972), pp. 12–3 and 17.Google Scholar

25. Laughead, W. B., The Marvelous Exploits of Paul Bunyan, As Told in the Camps of the White Pine Lumbermen for Generations (Minneapolis, Minn.: The Red River Lumber Company, 1924), 3rd edition.Google Scholar

26. See Marling, , The Colossus of Roads (1984), esp. Note 27.Google Scholar

27. My discussion of the Minnesota souvenir rests on a summer of fieldwork in the tourist meccas of the state in 1983. This travel was sponsored by a generous advance from the University of Minnesota Press; Bob Gambone, my tireless Research Assistant, did the driving.

28. Moon, William Least Heat, Blue Highways, A. Journey into America (Boston: Little Brown, 1982), p. 26.Google Scholar

29. Rybak, R. T., “Trapped in the Dells,” Minnesota Monthly, 18, No. 3 (03, 1984), p. 22.Google Scholar

30. Coleman, Nick, “Blue Earth puts Golden Spike in Interstate 90,” Minneapolis Tribune, 09 24, 1978, p. 16A.Google Scholar