By Thomas Bremer. University of Nebraska Press, 2025.
Sacred Wonderland: The Religious History of Yellowstone traces the religious dimensions of Yellowstone’s meanings, purposes, and popularity as the nation’s premier national park. Since its beginning in 1872, the world’s first national park has been a repository of meanings and aspirations for the people of the United States, an alluring destination with significance beyond its stunning mountain scenery, abundant wildlife, and the world’s most extensive collection of geysers, hot springs, and other thermal features. Deemed “America’s wonderland” by nineteenth-century railroad promoters, Yellowstone’s significance has made it a place of religion that mirrors the religious culture of the United States.
The book begins in the nineteenth century as the young nation discovered “the nakedness of our sleeping Yellowstone Beauty” in the wilds of the Rocky Mountains and goes into the twenty-first century with an unconventional church community adjacent to the park’s northwest boundary. Key themes draw attention to the racial and gender valences of national park history. The book highlights how Yellowstone was a product of Manifest Destiny. This essentially religious discourse melded Protestant Christianity with nationalist sentiments that justified the settler-colonial displacement of American Indian nations. In the twentieth century, the laudable conservation achievements of Progressives that greatly expanded national parks were inseparable from their support for eugenics. The result was a national park system that catered primarily to white Christian visitors.
From early assumptions about Native American beliefs to eclectic New Age associations, from rivalries between nineteenth-century Protestants and Catholics to twentieth-century ecumenical cooperation, religion has been woven into the cultural fabric of Yellowstone. Sacred Wonderland reveals a range of religious beliefs, practices, and interpretations that have made the park an appealing tourist destination and a significant icon of the American nation.
Thomas S. Bremer writes about American religious history, with a special interest in the intersections of religion and tourism, religion and nature, and U.S. national parks. He is Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee, where he taught courses in religious history for twenty-two years. Dr. Bremer has authored three books: Blessed with Tourists: The Borderlands of Religion and Tourism in San Antonio (University of North Carolina Press, 2004); Formed from this Soil: An Introduction to the Diverse History of Religion in America (Wiley-Blackwell, 2014); and Sacred Wonderland: The History of Religion in Yellowstone (University of Nebraska Press, 2025). He also writes the monthly Sacred Wonderland Newsletter featuring news and items of interest about national parks and other protected places. Additionally, Dr. Bremer has conducted historical research for the National Park Service as a consultant at the Lincoln Home National Historic Site in Springfield, Illinois.
