Writing Whiteness: Antebellum Guidebooks and the Codification of the Landscape in Catskill Tourism and Print

This article explores the relationship between print culture, tourism, and antebellum social and political issues. I define the antebellum tourism guidebook as a unique genre that disavowed the existence of nontourist populations through text and image. In particular, I argue that guidebook authors quote and cite the work of other authors (including Washington Irving) to create a mythology for the Catskills that marginalizes nonwhite people and encourages their removal: by imagining Native Americans as belonging exclusively to a mythic past, Irving and other authors provide a metaphorical framework for Manifest Destiny. This article exposes how deeply embedded tourism print culture was in antebellum ideologies of progress and empire.