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The Cate family of New Hampshire purchased this trailer to serve as their vacation home. Cars and highways had created vast new recreational opportunities, and during the depression families who were financially stable still enjoyed drives to remote scenic areas. The Cates, like other trailer owners, thought of touring as an extension of home life, and they could afford the security, comfort, and intimacy of a cottage on wheels.
Eben Cate was a rural mail carrier and earned two weeks of vacation time per year. Eben and Vernie and their children Rudolph and Virginia traveled to Florida in their new trailer. Every summer, they spent a week at York Beach, Maine, where they kept house, went for walks, and swam in the Atlantic Ocean. Vernie did the housekeeping — not much of a vacation for her, but a change of scene nonetheless. The Cates also visited Vernie's relatives in Vermont and parked "out near the barn" with an electrical hookup. The wooden, factory-built trailer came equipped with a bedroom, sofa beds, table, kitchen, closets, and cupboards.
House trailers were so appealing that thousands of itinerant people lived in them full-time in the 1930s. But early residential trailer camps had poor sanitary conditions and no landscaping. Some observers believed that traditional communities were threatened by the existence of these ad hoc, transient communities. For the first time, recreation vehicles created contradictory feelings of pride and disapproval.
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Object ID: 1981.0524.01
Division: Division of Work and Industry
Subject(s): Sports & Leisure, Transportation
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