The great American road trip, fueled by — and undercut by — the automobile that created it
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — There's something about the American road trip.
It brings to mind visions of cars the size of boats, the glory days before seat-belt laws and pit stops at the world's largest fill-in-the-blank. It has been memorialized in books like Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” and satirized in movies like “National Lampoon’s Vacation."
It primarily consists of hours upon hours of driving that should be boring — but somehow isn't? Maybe it's the anticipation of getting to some mythical destination — the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Death Valley. Or maybe it's the unexpected sights along the way. Tumbleweeds! They're real!
Americans love the idea of a road trip, but we often opt for reaching our destination as quickly as possible instead. The rise of cheap airfare has made it easy to travel without the hassle of driving. When we do drive, we’re likely to stick to the interstates, blasting past the small towns we idealize at 70-plus miles per hour. These options are faster and, for some, safer.
But in gaining convenience, what have we lost?
As far back as 1921, Cornelius Vanderbilt Jr. wrote of a road trip he took with his new wife from New York City to Hot Springs, Virginia. “We had heard people say in muffled tones that the roads would be impassable and that it was foolish to even think of trying them,” he wrote. “But within four days after leaving New York we reached Hot Springs, none the worse for wear and a great deal happier for the experience.”
Long-distance travel dipped with the Great Depression and then rationing during World War II, but it came roaring back as the veterans returned home and started families.
In “Are We There Yet? The Golden Age of American Family Vacations,” historian Susan Rugh argues that the period after World War II and before the oil crisis of the 1970s was the apex of the family road trip. More Americans were rising into the middle class, many had paid vacation for the first time, car ownership was increasing rapidly, and the federal government was investing in highways that allowed for more comfortable long-distance travel.
Many veterans, having traveled to Europe for the war, were eager to show their children what they had been fighting to preserve. One popular destination was Washington, D.C., where the Allied victory had enhanced the importance of the city as the capital of the free world. Families also visited historic monuments, homes and battlefields.
In the West, the nation's majestic national parks, which belong to the people, were both a tourist destination and a symbol of American democracy. Attendance surged, increasing by more than 650% between 1946 and 1966 as the government pumped in more than a billion dollars to upgrade facilities, Rugh writes.
Traveling together to see America both strengthened family bonds and “provided a way to educate children as citizens,” she writes.
The open road did not signal freedom for all Americans. Black families in particular often had to deal with segregated facilities, even outside of the South.
“The experience is totally different,” says Allen Pietrobon, a professor at Trinity University in Washington, D.C., who teaches a course on road trips. “It’s not carefree. You can’t just, whenever you need gas, stop wherever you want because the gas station may not serve you.”
The National Parks, being run by the federal government, were not supposed to discriminate, but some still did — with separate campgrounds for Black families, for instance. The problem was so systemic that there were guidebooks, like the well known Green Book, specifically made for Black travelers, listing hotels and restaurants where they'd be welcomed.
The obstacles of the vacationing Black family even played a role in the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Rugh writes. Today the protests of college students going on Freedom Rides and organizing lunch counter sit-ins are recognized as the motivating forces behind the Act’s desegregation of public accommodations. But in Congress at the time, the Senate Committee of Commerce was hearing stories like that of a Black business owner turned away from a motel in St. Petersburg, Florida, even after he offered to pay twice the normal rate. The exhausted family, including two children, had to try to sleep in the car as best they could.
Narratives like these helped engender sympathy for the civil rights struggle among lawmakers.
“In the face of Jim Crow laws in the South and persistent racial discrimination in the rest of the nation, the cultural icon of the family vacation was offered as persuasive evidence of the need for a federal law to ensure the rights of all citizens,” Rugh writes.
It wasn’t just the national parks that needed more facilities as Americans took to the roads. Vacationers needed lodging, restaurants and service stations along the way.
Some entrepreneurs competed with one another to make their accommodations stand out from the crowd, like Wigwam Village, where the motel rooms are giant concrete teepees. Others saw the opportunity to develop roadside attractions like the world’s largest nutcracker.
“Americans are hucksters," Rugh says. “And if somebody has an attraction, somebody else is gonna serve lemonade or hamburgers right by it.”
One highway that was filled with attractions was Route 66, which turned 100 this year.
Commissioned in 1926 and fully paved by the late 1930s, the highway between Chicago and Los Angeles catered to a mid-century craze for the Old West of the 1880s. A group of business owners promoted the road, dubbing it the “Main Street of America,” but Bobby Troupe’s 1946 hit song “(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66” first recorded by Nat King Cole has had more staying power than any advertisement.
Like so many other things Americans claim to love, the highway that John Steinbeck dubbed the "Mother Road" was victim of a competing American paragon — progress.
The construction of the interstates diverted much of the traffic away from communities, and many businesses closed. Entire small towns disappeared. But a movement is afoot to preserve portions of this iconic highway, and people still come from around the world to experience its neon lights and kitschy Western-themed attractions.
Richard Ratay calls himself the King of the Road Trip.
His book “Don't Make Me Pull Over! An Informal History of the Family Road Trip” opens with a harrowing scene of waking up as a child in the backseat of the family car as it is spinning off an icy road and down an embankment. The car was stuck along with dozens of others, and the family had to wait hours in the cold before being towed out.
“Years later," he writes, “we'd all agree it was the best start to a family road trip ever.”
It’s counterintuitive, but sometimes it's the hardships and unexpected bumps in the road that make a vacation memorable.
Pietrobon recalls a story from a coworker who got into a car accident in a tiny town in Nevada.
“It was a Saturday afternoon, everything’s closed. No rental cars available till Tuesday. And so they’re just stuck in this place. And they actually ended up having a really amazing experience,” he says. “The whole purpose now of higher end travel is to eliminate any friction whatsoever. And we do lose something in that, I think.”
Before the interstates, the highway system was really just the main street of towns, connected by highways. Someone stopping for the night or even just a meal would participate in the life of that town.
″In meeting so many folks from different places, it gave families traveling by car the opportunity to realize that Americans in different areas of the country may talk a little different, they may dress a little differently, they may eat different foods, but when all is said and done, we aren’t that different after all," Ratay said in an interview.
Today’s interstates mostly bypass these towns, providing chain-store gas, food and lodging right off the exit. This makes driving faster and more convenient, but also less distinctive. Airplane travel elides even the minimal local interaction that the interstates provide.
“We traded the the opportunity to make unexpected discoveries and encounter and engage with small-town America,” Ratay says. “We traded those experiences for the speed and convenience of getting to our final destinations.”
Although many small roadside motels, restaurants and attractions folded when the interstates were built, some have managed to stick around. It's still possible to take the slower road, stopping to talk to locals and soaking in the experience, along with its little inconveniences.
“Get on one of those old highways anywhere,” Rugh says. “Go through Illinois and go on the Lincoln Highway, cross the Midwest on the Lincoln Highway. Go from Arizona to Canada on Highway 89, Highway 1 in California.”
In older travel narratives, Pietrobon says, the destination is almost irrelevant. "I think about who’s going to be the next Jack Kerouac where, you know, the journey is what he’s writing about, not just the snapshots of when you stop for the day."
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Part of a recurring series of stories marking the 250th anniversary of the United States. For more, click here. For a presentation of objects that have changed the nation, click here. For more stories on the anniversary, click here.
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