Tourist town: Tourism and the emergence of modern San Francisco, 1869--1915

This dissertation examines the relationship between the development of tourism in San Francisco and broader changes in American culture from the 1870s to the 1910s. The dissertation argues that the growing presence of tourists in San Francisco, local responses to that presence, the emergence of the city's tourism industry, and the industry's far-reaching influence turned San Francisco into a "tourist town." The sociospatial, commercial, and cultural developments that marked San Francisco's transformation into a tourist town enhanced the city's appeal as an arena within which American tourists might shed Victorian constraints and experiment with modernist values. San Francisco's transformation into a tourist town, however, ensured that this arena would be bounded by the imperatives of commercial capitalism and filled with locals pursuing their own competing agendas.; Drawing on promotional materials, travel accounts, newspapers, and other sources, the dissertation traces three intertwined trajectories. The first trajectory, which follows the growth of San Francisco's tourism industry, encompasses local elites' efforts to promote the city as they wanted tourists to see it and their efforts to shape the city into something that tourists would want to see. The second trajectory follows tourists' broadening backgrounds and divergent experiences in the city. Prior to the 1890s, elite tourists driven by Victorian values sought picturesque scenes and admirable institutions. As middle-class tourists swelled the flow of visitors, small groups of tourists and locals began to pursue alternative experiences. Motivated by modernist impulses, they sought contact with "authentic" others associated with the city's marginalized places, including Chinatown and the Barbary Coast. The third trajectory follows ordinary locals' responses to tourism. Some locals carved niches in the tourism industry prior to the 1890s. The growth of modernist tourism, however, provided new opportunities to accommodate touristic interest and new incentives to resist it. Locals who accommodated touristic interest commercialized and ultimately undercut the modernist pursuit of authentic experience.; Demonstrating that the study of tourism in San Francisco provides insight into the weakening of American Victorianism and the emergence of American modernism, this dissertation contributes to the fields of western American history, urban history, cultural history, and tourism studies.