Zion National Park was and still is a very popular destination for the American Family Vacation

The National Park Service was created in 1916 as a way to preserve and protect the natural beauty of the United States. In addition to this primary objective, the parks became a large attraction for tourists and outdoors enthusiasts. For the first thirty years or so annual visitors to the parks was quite low (keep in mind that there were only very few parks in those days) at less than 1 million guests per year. In the 1930's and the first two years of the 1940's there was a surge of interest that brought that number up to 20 million in 1941. The US entry into WWII saw the visitor statistic drop drastically by 14 million per year. The end of the war was just what the national parks needed.

From 1945 to 1970, annual park attendance grew every single year. [1]

The growth of the National Parks was strongly tied to their popularity for family vacations. These areas were seen, as they today as the perfect place to get away from it all. A Family could drive to the park see the animals, enjoy the vistas, do some hiking, and awe at the monuments. It was just an added bonus that these things could be done away from the growing social and cultural tensions both domestically and internationally. 

You can still see this today in the form of how states market thmeselves through the parks. Many states rely heavily on touism to bring valuable cash flow into their economies. Grab any brochure or visit any website for touring a state and there will be a very prominent image of a family enjoying the outdoors, especially the state and national parks, monuments, and forests. [2] 

This poster was produced as part of a large marketing initiative by the National Park service to encourage tourism and travel to the parks when they were still relatively new.

The cold-war era also saw a very organized effort to improve and expand the facilities in the parks as a way to pull in more visitors. In the early 1950's an initiative called Mission 66 was put into place as the pinnacle of this effort. The name of the project refers to the 50th anniversary of the service in 1966 and that was the completion dead-line. Huge improvements were planned and executed for the housing, facilities, visitor centers, trails, safety equipment and preservation infrastructure.

Prior to the work done as a part of this project the national parks were simply overrun with tourists as they were simply unprepared for the huge influx of people. A large contributing factor was that of the burgeoning automotive and recreational vehicle markets (which will be discussed at length later in the exhibit) combined with the new US highway system that had been constructed during the great depression. With the newfound ability to journey across the nation on a highway in a new vehicle allowed the American family to visit these beautiful places. [3]

Mission 66 was very influential in making the parks across the country, especially in the American west, even more attractive destinations for tourists and families. With the improvements made to the parks and visitation rates growing annually there was a new market emerging for companies to explore. The next section will explore how the great outdoors was brought to the people through commercialization.