Dixie before Disney: 100 Years of Roadside Fun

Abstract

Dixie Before Disney: 100 Years of Roadside Fun. By Tim Hollis. (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, c. 1999. Pp. xiv, 193. Paper, $25.00, ISBN 1-57806-118-0; cloth, $45.00, ISBN 1-57806-117-2). Tim Hollis, a resident of Birmingham, Alabama, takes readers on a tour of the variety of amusements--natural or manufactured, oversized or miniature, successful or failed--that grew up along roadsides in the South from roughly the nineteenth century to the present. Hollis was himself introduced to such roadside attractions as a child in the 1960s. His father preserved these moments in time by taking photographs during family automobile trips, and also by passionately saving the road maps, tour planners, menus, ticket stubs, matchbooks, postcards, periodical advertisements, receipts, and other souvenir ephemera. Hollis based his account on memories of a lifetime of trips, supplemented by tourist literature. The book is written from the perspective of a nostalgic journey and has the depth of a travelogue. The South was in many ways a pioneer in tourism. George Washington mapped out the area around Natural Bridge, Virginia, in the 1700s, and Thomas Jefferson later built a cabin there for visitors. President Andrew Jackson designated Hot Springs, Arkansas, a federal reservation long before other areas became national parks. Silver Springs, Florida, attracted former Civil War soldiers, including Generals Grant and Sherman. Communities that did not attract visitors with their distinct geographical features (such as falls, springs, swamps, and caverns) or with local landmarks (such as forts, battlefields, and birthplaces of notable people) manufactured attractions in the form of monuments, observation towers, museums, and amusement parks, or staged local pageants and festivals. Inscriptions painted on barn roofs about Rock City were just one of many marketing devices that for decades funneled curious travelers to Lookout Mountain. Entrepreneurs attempted to capitalize on the tourist trade by erecting offerings that appeared to be out of place in the region--for example, Wild West Parks, Ghost Cities, and Tiki Villages--or fabricated places like Cherokee, North Carolina, Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and Panama City, Florida. Floridaland may have been the tackiest of all--it offered Everything You Came To Florida To See (p. 170). Hollis indicates that shifts from travel by railroad and steamboat to automobile, and then to airlines, altered the class composition, destination, duration, and expectations of tourists. Railroads and steamboats brought wealthy tourists who could afford to spend extended time at grand resorts and natural features. …