Palestine Park, looking "South" across the Sea of Galilee, and down the Jordan river valley towards the Dead Sea. Markers indicate the position of biblical sites.Detail of Palestine Park, showing the markers for Jerusalem, the Mt. of Olives, and the town of Bethany.
The park was one of Chautauqua's first landmarks. In 1874, Chautauqua founder Rev. John Heyl Vincent gave his friend Dr. W. W. Wythe the task of laying out Palestine Park as a visual aid for teaching Biblical history and geography to the Sunday School teachers that were Chautauqua's first visitors.[citation needed] In the nineteenth century, people arrived at Chautauqua via ferryboats and disembarked at Palestine Park so that their first footsteps were on the Holy Land as though they were pilgrims going up to Jerusalem; an actual journey to the Land of Israel was well beyond the financial ability of most Americans in that era.[2]