Last year, I stumbled into a vintage trailer rally – Antiques of the Spanish Peaks at the La Veta Pines RV Park in the small town of La Veta. I was captivated by the gleaming, eye-popping aluminum travel trailers, the historic bicycles, lawn chairs and ice chests, the miniature flocks of pink flamingos circling drink trays at Happy Hour and circus-like canopies stretched above trailer doors.
I know vintage cars and trucks, but the trailer world is new to me and did I have fun listening and learning about trailer restorations. Trailer owners tell tales, but their stories always come in two parts: Finding the trailer, buying it and dragging it, abandoned, out of the junkyard, industrial storage, mud, pasture or desert sands, and then lovingly bringing it back to life. Cars and trucks get fenders straightened, radios repaired and replacement side mirrors. Trailers are the original tiny houses and they need everything – floors, ceilings, stoves, refrigerators, beds, curtains, interior lighting, exterior lights, seat cushions, doors with screens and the occasional toilet/shower combination.
Situated in town, the La Veta Pines RV Park is a compact, historical park that snugly fits 20 vintage trailers. Its annual rally is always the third weekend in August. I viewed history on parade and talked to the proud owners about their remarkable finds. Robert and Jessica Kubik from Loveland showed off their shiny aluminum 1955 Spartan Royal Mansion Double Ender with its 38-foot length and identical front and back.
The restoration took 1,400 hours with an additional 200 hours just polishing the exterior surface.
“In the 1950s, trailers like mine were marketed to people moving around the country: Engineers, WWII veterans, and construction workers building the modern West of interstate highways and concrete dams,” Robert said. “They pulled these trailers with big Cadillacs, Packards, Buicks and Oldsmobiles. This was not a recreational thing.”
His trailer, with a 1955 price of $5,532, has a full birch wood interior and is now insured for $150,000. The Kubiks’ trailer took Best of Show and People’s Choice at the prestigious Mid-Century Modern-Palm Springs Modernism Show.
“We are tugging history around,” laughed Jessica.
To be vintage means to have been built before 1980.
In La Veta, I saw a 1961 Holiday House designed in Medford, Oregon, by workers at the Harry & David Fruit Co. They built trailers in the winter before spring fruit harvests. Only 200 were made before the factory burned down. I marveled at a 1963 Streamline Duke created in El Monte, California, at 23 feetlong. The Streamlines are the only ones built with a railroad train-like rear light. The company began as an offshoot of the Airstream Co., by ex-World War II pilots who procured surplus aluminum.
The vintage trailer world includes an appraiser at Tincantourists.com in Florida; Tin Cup Awnings, which is a custom canopy maker from Franktown; and affinity groups like Friendly Average Campers and Tin Canners of Colorado. T-shirts proclaim: “Shiny Trailer, Empty Wallet.” Plus there is an array of tea towels, stickers, trailer salt and pepper shakers and even travel trailer sugar cookies. A magnet reads, “Let’s just go camping and never come back.” There is Vintage Trailers Magazine, an annual trailer calendar, and the definitive book “Illustrated Field Guide to Vintage Trailers.”
La Veta Pines owner Greg Garrett has his own story of rescuing a 1937 Hayes trailer from a California field, buried in mud, with all of the previous owner’s possessions including tax returns, dentures and a jar of pickles. It will take a while to bring that trailer back to life. Most prewar trailers are gone. Garrett hosts vintage trailer rallies and he has a display area for old camping gear, fishing rods and reels, coolers and lanterns.
On a Saturday night with stars above and trailer canopy lights sprinkled below, 1950s music plays rock ’n’ roll. A microphone is passed around. Vintage trailer owners tell their trailer testimonials of restoration, and they open before-and-after scrapbooks. Garrett says, “They talk about finding their trailers, difficulties in getting them registered and stories of rebuilding them. Some owners haven’t touched their trailers. Those relics have their own charm, too.”
The Shasta trailers had small fins at the top rear. Small travel trailers often have the nickname of “canned hams.” For large Airstreams, their official title is Airstream International Land Yacht. I attended my second vintage trailer rally at The Views RV Park just west of Dolores where I climbed inside a 1954 Airstream Flying Cloud and learned that “Home is where the welcome mat is!”
Roger and Evelyn Sigman from Grants, New Mexico, found their trailer with windows shot out, bullet holes in the back and half the floor gone. Their five granddaughters love the trailer and made them a miniature cardboard model with a little door that opens to show photos of the smiling girls inside.
Bill and Regina Jordan from Salt Lake City happily opened their 1956 14-foot-long Comet, produced in Kansas.
“I restored this for us. You can make it how you want it,” Bill said. “The icebox is now a pantry. A lot of design elements were covered by paint and ghosted out. Now they’re back.”
Inside Chris and Steve Scholl’s 1957 13-foot-long Santa Fe, I found an original screen door and the exterior paint scheme carried inside with new upholstery in the same colors. Serious restorers, their trailer even contained a 1957 National Geographic to match the trailer’s build date and a tea towel with the inscription “WEEKEND FORECAST: Camping with a 100% chance of drinking.”
“I made everything in here. Walls. Cabinets. Beds. That’s how crazy we get with these things. The wood is New Zealand pine and all the cabinetry is birch. This is a rescue trailer used for storage and once owned by the Bureau of Land Management,” former New York City cabdriver Ed Derderian from Moab, Utah tells me about his 1955 Boles Aero. One of the finest California trailer manufacturers, Boles Aeros are highly prized by collectors because of their all-aluminum exteriors made from surplus World War II B-17 bombers.
From Farmington, Mark and Marsha Camrud opened for inspection their vintage 1952 Boles Aero Montecito with two exterior doors and no bathroom because this was a “park model” meant for trailer parks, not camping.
“The person who bought this new after WWII was following good jobs,” Mark said. “Maybe he built dams or worked as a plumber or electrician. This trailer would have been set in place.” The trailer was immaculate with all original woodwork and even a period calendar.
At the Views RV Park, I finally made it to the vintage teardrop trailers owned by a father and daughter team. Duckie Drake from Moab told me her 1945 teardrop Kit camper was one of only the first 16 sold by Kit Manufacturing as a kit – all the others the company made were fully manufactured. She found it near Moab, perhaps pulled there during the 1950s uranium boom and later abandoned. Duckie told her own tale of trailer rescue, but now, “It’s been from ocean to ocean and from Canada to Mexico.” Her father, Ron, has a 1947 Kit deluxe with two doors and its original stove. Sometimes he likes to pull it with a 1951 Ford Coupe. Now he’s restoring a 1946 Mystique teardrop he found in South Dakota.
“I had to cut a tree down to get it out of the yard,” he said. “I’m removing layers of paint and fixing all the dents. It’s a hobby that gets in your blood.”
As for the vintage trailer families, Matt Eytchison, owner of The Views RV Park, explains that compared with modern RV owners, “The vintage crowd is much more social. They like camaraderie and sharing stories, hosting potluck dinners.” Maybe they socialize because their trailers are so small.
Without a doubt it’s a traveling community connected by love of American history, their trailers’ names, and their manufacturing dates. What’s wrong with nostalgia? Who knows? Maybe there’s a teardrop in my future.
Andrew Gulliford, an award-winning author and editor, is professor of history at Fort Lewis College. Reach him at andy@agulliford.com.
