Rebranding the American Wilderness - a Talk with Margie Amodeo

The Wilmington Historical Society will host historical researcher and librarian Margie Amodeo for a talk and slide show entitled “Rebranding of the American Wilderness: The Adirondack Research Library Postcard Collection” on Monday, July 17th at 7 p.m. at the Wilmington Community Center located at 7 Community Center Circle just off Springfield Road in Wilmington.

Changing people’s interpretations of the wild through rebranding the American wilderness would require changing attitudes. For most early 19th century Americans, the idea of experiencing wilderness was a frightening undertaking. Postcards, along with more available transportation and comfortable accommodations, played a role in changing the minds of the rising middle class and introduced them to wilderness tourism. In turn, a new American identity was born.

According to Margie Amodeo, “What has made such an impression on me, scanning over 1,200 postcards as a part of a digitization project in the Adirondack Research Library at the Kelly Adirondack Center of Union College, is how inextricably linked Adirondack tourists’ experiences are with American identity.” She also tells us, “Tourism also created a market for depictions of American scenes. When they left, like so many museum shop customers, they sought to take an affordable piece of this experience home with them and share it with friends and family. What collectors of these postcards created was a portfolio of this new brand – this American wilderness tourists’ experience.”

Margie Amodeo is the Coordinator at the Kelly Adirondack Center of Union College. In the Adirondack Research Library, she has encouraged and facilitated research by faculty, students, and the community since 2013. The collections at the ARL focus on the grassroots environmental movements that, figuratively and quite literally, shaped the Adirondack Park.

The “The Rebranding of the American Wilderness: The Adirondack Research Library Postcard Collection” program on July 17th is free and open to the public. Refreshments are provided by the Up-A-Creek Restaurant in Wilmington. For further information, contact the Wilmington Historical Society at whs12997@hotmail.com or 518-420-8370.