In brief, as the Amish retained horse-and-buggy travel in the first half of the twentieth century, mainstream Americans took to the automobile. And as expressways opened up rural regions to tourism in postwar America, tourists began making their way to Amish farmsteads in search of the simple life.12 The outsiders’ growing curiosity about their exotic fellow Americans provided an opportunity for non-Amish entrepreneurs to begin transforming the images, practices, and artifacts of Amish life into commodities for public consumption.
Tourist Sites as Theater
The emergence of Amish-themed tours, tourist sites, and eateries in the mid-twentieth century created a challenge for both Amish people and enterprising entrepreneurs. The Amish faced the quandary of how to be hospitable to visitors yet retain the boundaries of their communities, even as the visitors increasingly yearned not only for information but also for access to “real” Amish life. The entrepreneurs who catered to tourists had to keep the boundaries intact, because the sharper the difference between Amish culture and the outside world, the greater the appeal of Amish Country as a tourist destination.
This conundrum of the tourist site operator—making Amish life accessible to tourists but not so accessible that all boundaries would dissolve—was resolved somewhat by creating tourist experiences that took on quasi-theatrical features. Like many social rituals, tourist presentations can be viewed as performances with actors, scripts, costumes, and audiences. The theatrical features of Amish-themed tourism include real Amish people backstage, and tours, guides, and costumed actors performing on stage for the visitors. Tourism entrepreneurs stage productions (artifacts, exhibits, presentations, tours, experiences) and sometimes orchestrate brief, but controlled, backstage encounters with Amish people. This staged authenticity offers tourists a glimpse of authentic Amish culture while politely keeping them from slipping backstage for unsupervised contact with real Amish people.13 The staged performances also protect Amish people from what otherwise would be an unwelcome intrusion of hordes of visitors on their properties and into their daily lives.
The tourist is encouraged to be “a passive consumer … through pamphlets, museums, tours, films, dramatic presentations, lectures, and demonstrations.”14 In the end, few visitors have direct access to Amish people apart from those selling their wares to outsiders. Even Amish-operated roadside stands and retail outlets are staged in ways that prevent tourists from intruding backstage. Visitors are regularly reminded through signs and pamphlets to respect Amish privacy and refrain from photographing them. Staged attractions, guided tours, and “authentic Amish” activities like buggy rides satisfy the tourist need to meet the “other” without ever engaging real Amish people in daily life.
An Ohio publication, Hearts & Hands: The Official Travel Planner of Amish Country, offers a good example of the theater that awaits visitors to Amish communities. The brochure presents itself as “a starting point” to the “hidden treasures of Amish Country,” where tourists can “Meet the people. Taste the food. Take something authentic home.” There are maps for self-guided tours, but at the same time the planner subtly encourages tourists not to go it alone because “professional tours provide a much more meaningful tour. … Dinner in an Amish home is an experience not to be missed, [but] this can only be booked through our local operators.”15
In Lancaster County, visitors may tour the sights in air-conditioned vans or buses. Amish Country Tours offers them a “shuttle tour of the out-of-the-way back-roads and country lanes, where [they]’ll experience the work and family ethic of the Amish.”16 Such ventures invite the tourist to safely embrace Amish life. For example, Amish Impressions at the Red Caboose asks visitors whether they have “ever wondered what it would be like to be Amish for one day,” and encourages them to “make it happen. … Our motto is ‘Picture yourself Amish.’ It is here that you can dress in real Amish clothing and have your picture taken in one of our three Amish country scenes and even outside in a corn field (weather permitting).”17 A few miles away, the Amish Experience Theater invites visitors to witness “the dramatic tale of an Amish family’s effort to preserve a lifestyle and culture” and then to enjoy a “unique, intimate visit to three Amish properties—a farm at milking time to observe how the Amish milk cows and cool milk without electricity, a home ‘cottage industry’ to hear about and observe a unique handcraft, and a visit to an Amish family for an informal chat right in their home.”18
Although tourism came later to midwestern communities than to Pennsylvania, Amish-themed attractions now also punctuate America’s heartland. Amishville, in Berne, Indiana, opened in 1968 with an Amish tour guide, and Amish Acres, which includes a staged representation of Amish life, opened in Nappanee, Indiana, two years later. Amish Backroads, a guide to LaGrange County, Indiana, assures visitors that “there is no better place to acquaint yourself with the Amish Culture, craftsmanship and genuine friendliness than our backroads. Experience this simple way of life by driving at your own leisurely pace and discover what makes LaGrange County special.”19 Similarly, Iowa tourism officials invite visitors to the community of Kalona, “a place where buggies travel the highways next to cars, Amish farmers work the land with horse-drawn equipment.”20
Whether in Arthur, Illinois, or Harmony, Minnesota, Amish tourism enriches regional economies, especially those in the settlements that attract millions of visitors. In Lancaster County, for example, the Amish are a key magnet for eleven million tourists who spend nearly $2 billion dollars in a tourism industry that employs 22,000 people. The three largest centers of Amish tourism (Lancaster County, Pennsylvania; Holmes County, Ohio; and Elkhart County, Indiana) draw nineteen million visitors annually—235 tourists for every Amish person living in those areas. The tourism industry in these communities creates a combined total of 33,000 jobs.21 Although tourism provides a viable alternative to manufacturing or heavy industry for members of the non-Amish community, the demands of visitors can also be threatening. An editor of Wooster, Ohio’s Daily Record lamented, “Tiny hamlets like Berlin, which once reposed lazily on summer afternoons, recalling the charm, atmosphere, and pace of bygone days, have been overrun with throngs of tourists.”22
Yet judging by the number of people who pass through official visitor center turnstiles, tourists appreciate the performances staged for them by those who appear to be in the know, enjoying the Amish worlds constructed for them. As one researcher put it, “Instead of directly observing an attraction,” tourists often “find themselves merely seeking to confirm” what authorities have “deemed sight-worthy.”23 Tourism involves encountering a world different from one’s own, and that can be unsettling. But in the constructed settings of Amish Country, both real and virtual, the tourist remains in control. The visitor can indulge in nostalgia for the simple life, enjoy a break from the “real world,” and leave with a bit of Amishness in the form of memories, photos, and souvenirs.
Despite the magnitude of Amish tourism, surprisingly little evidence-based knowledge exists about who the visitors are, why they come, how they experience their visit, and what reflections they carry home with them.24 Various scholars have speculated that tourists in general are seeking a temporary escape from the tensions of hypermodern life, searching for authenticity and meaning, hoping to learn about and experience different cultures, or simply engaging in recreation.25 Without evidence, it is not clear which if any of these explanations best interpret the motivations of visitors to Amish Country or how they experience what they encounter there.
Some may return home convinced of the superiority of mainstream life and relieved that they can travel by car and have access to the Internet, others may leave with both respect and ambivalence about Amish life, and still others may admire it enough to try adopting some Amish traits into their own lives—taking more time for family, watching less television, or attending religious services more frequently.
In any event, tourism allows some visitors to taste Amish life but leave reassured that there really is no p
lace like home and that home can supply all one needs. In Selling the Amish: The Tourism of Nostalgia, Susan L. Trollinger argues that the tourist ultimately finds assurance that life can be better. The writer of the Christian Homekeeper™ Blog notes that she and her family lived in a “Conservative Amish community” for a while and so experienced all of the “godly attributes … and foibles” of the Amish; nevertheless, she realized that women can find the life they seek “right where they are.”26
Most tourists perceive that their access to authentic Amish life is limited and that what they experience in Amish Country is closer to theater than to real life. Still, they likely leave knowing that having attended a production of Amishness is better than not having gone at all.
Amish Participation in Tourism
Although the Amish did not actively seek the attention of visitors, they have not remained entirely aloof from them. Especially in those settlements with sizable tourist industries, some Amish people participate and benefit significantly from tourism by creating products specifically for tourist markets and in some cases operating sizable retail operations that target visitors. A few Amish families serve family-style meals in their homes for groups of ten to forty visitors, and other households rent small apartments to visitors. Even in more remote settlements, hand-lettered “For Sale” signs on Amish properties along backcountry roads offer tourists sundry products: homemade rugs, root beer, tomatoes, doghouses, eggs, and fishing worms.
While many Amish businesses cater to the tourist trade, the nature of their participation depends on the community. The more conservative Amish groups may restrict interaction with tourists to local farm stands, but others develop or participate in businesses that cater specifically to tourists. In western New York, for example, tourist maps of the region identify shops in conservative Amish communities where visitors can find lawn furniture, produce, maple syrup, and quilts.27 Operated from outbuildings on family farms, these small businesses offer products grown or produced on-site, keeping family members employed close to home, allowing children to work with their parents, and enabling parents to control the interaction between children and outsiders.
Not far away, in the more progressive Clymer, New York, community, the interaction is different. An “Amish Map” for western Chautauqua County highlights much larger businesses. An Amish harness maker in the community made more than seven hundred harnesses in eleven years: “I had a big shed with nothing in it. My harnesses were wearing out, and there was no one to fix them. So … I got me a sewing machine.” In addition to making harnesses to order for Amish and English customers, this shop offers grooming supplies, gloves, liniments, and, in an upstairs room, a variety of black and natural-color straw hats. Not far from the harness shop is a bulk-foods store serving Amish and tourists alike. In addition to staples, the store sells packaged foods, toys, books, school supplies, fabrics, and ready-made Amish clothing.
An Amish woman works in the kitchen of a non-Amish restaurant that caters to tourists. Women in more traditional groups would not be employed in commercial tourist businesses in this way. Burton Buller
Other Amish businesses in the Clymer area clearly cater to the tourist market. One household runs a craft store and offers buggy rides, while another has an “Amish family-style restaurant by reservation,” and a third gives quilting demonstrations by appointment. Many Amish people in Holmes County, Ohio, are similarly invested in tourism. Charles Hurst and David McConnell argue that “manufacturing, tourism, and agriculture form the interconnected core of industries in the county,” and according to one of their Amish informants, “those three here in Holmes County cannot exist without each other.”28
The tourist trade offers other opportunities as well—opportunities that some Amish and Mennonite people consider ways to witness about their faith to outsiders seeking fulfillment or meaning in life. In several states with sizable settlements of Mennonites and Amish, Mennonites have established information and interpretative centers to educate visitors about Anabaptist history and beliefs and about the customs of local Amish and Mennonite communities. Amish people have actively participated in and supported the programs of two Mennonite interpretative centers: Amish and Mennonite Heritage Center in Berlin, Ohio, and Menno-Hof in Shipshewana, Indiana.
In 1967, three Mennonite businessmen in Berne, Indiana, saw in a recently vacated Amish farmstead both “an educational opportunity” and “a worthwhile business venture.” They had little difficulty convincing a young Amish farmer, David Schwartz, to move to the farm and open the property for tours. Within a year of its opening, Amishville was getting rave reviews from travel writers. “We are a humble people,” Schwartz explained, and “do not intend to go against our religion by opening an Amish farm to the public.” Yet he felt “this is right, that the people ought to know more about Amish ways and we can help do this at Amishville. We will create a better understanding—we feel we are accomplishing something in behalf of the Amish community.”29
Other Amish participants in the tourism industry echo Schwartz’s insistence on the educational importance of such enterprises. As one Lancaster County resident wrote, “Sometimes it would be easy to be resentful about all the tourists clogging our roads and asking us questions, especially when we are in a hurry or busy. But let’s remember that we are showing whether we are just Amish or also Christian by the way we treat our fellow humans. After all, if we visited an Indian reservation, would we be less curious?”30
Although Amish tradition does not sanction active proselytizing, at least some members find in tourism the opportunity for public witness and a subtle preaching of Christian values. As one Amish minister put it, “Living a good example has led more people to Christ than any amount of talking has ever done.”31
Not all Amish are cheerful participants in the tourism industry, however. Writing in 1989, an Amish man from Shipshewana, Indiana, complained in a note to the Amish newspaper the Budget about the construction of “another new building to promote and accommodate tourism. Many residents are getting quite perturbed at the continuous rush to develop more projects to lure tourists and yearn for good old days when the town was nice and quiet.” With all the visitors “during the summer, town officials have problems with traffic and parking and the sewer system is so overloaded that they have to open the gates and let her run.” In his view, “the town is so overrun with tourists it seems like a herd of animals,” but, he acknowledged, “others call all of this progress.”32
Writing from Ohio, another Budget correspondent wrote that “tourists still flood into Holmes [County] and continue to do so until the fall scenery is past. It’s rather ridiculous that our area has become somewhat of a showcase of the world, and even more ridiculous what people do to get some of the tourist’s money; such as advertising ‘Amish’ water.” Just as bad were “Amish brand foods from New Castle, PA—Amish hot dogs, sausage, turkey, chicken, bologna, and kielbasa. Maybe someday the tourists will come to realize Amish and non-Amish foods are identical.”33
For other Amish people, the problem with tourism is not the inconvenience of being put on display but the fact that the entire enterprise symbolizes worldly pleasures. Said one Amish woman, “We are serving as a tool to lure tourists to Lancaster County. Personally, I do not feel any resentment against tourists, but … we are opposed to having our souls marketed by having our sacred beliefs and traditions stolen from us and then distributed to the tourists, and sometimes having them mocked.”34
Summarizing conversations with more than a dozen Lancaster County Amish people about tourism, filmmaker Dirk Eitzen recounts, “While all of them said they find tourists and tourist traffic annoying at times, most of them also felt that tourism has had, on balance, a positive impact on their own community because of the economic benefits it has brought.”35
Virtual Tourism
If tourism means observing a performance of Amish life, then the stay-at-home tourist can also participate vicariously in Amish worlds through the lens of
a camera held by someone else. To design productions that interpret created Amish worlds, filmmakers—like tourists—struggle to get backstage for scenes of real Amish life. In fact, Amish people are much more averse to speaking on camera than they are to chatting with a tourist: those who grant on-camera interviews risk excommunication. Thus, video producers, like tourists, are often limited to scenes of Amish countryside, interiors of peopleless homes, and activities caught by a distant telephoto lens. Otherwise, even “documentary” productions must turn to ex-Amish people, unbaptized youth, actors, or the faceless voices of actual Amish people.
Produced by American Experience for PBS in 2012, The Amish used authentic Amish voices to narrate the film. The director faced a formidable challenge: how to fill the screen for two hours trying to cover a subject that did not want to be covered. Mark Samels, executive producer of American Experience, acknowledged, “In our 23 years, with almost 300 films completed, this was the most difficult one that we’ve ever made.”36
Film images, like staged Amish-themed attractions, often perpetuate mainstream stereotypes, play on consumer nostalgia, and reinforce American notions about the authenticity, innocence, and joy of country living. Documentary film maker Eitzen notes that “people watch movies, even nonfiction movies, for the experience, that is, for the emotional payoff.”37
Indeed, “experience” is a catchword on DVD covers, particularly those of documentary films, many of which read like tourist brochures for visits to Amish Country. For example, the jacket text for the documentary The Amish: How They Survive invites the viewer to “go inside an Amish home. Experience moments of Amish life as told by the Amish themselves.” Similarly, the jacket text for The Amish: Back Roads to Heaven invites the viewer to “experience Amish farm life, family life, business enterprises, childhood, school, worship, horse culture, business practices, barn raising … and more.” Like Amish-themed tourist attractions, these films carefully craft a portrait of Amish life that emphasizes its peacefulness, lack of technology, sense of community, and distance from the modern world.
The Amish Page 49