Highways and Highway Transportation

by George R. Chatburn

Touring.

—Stand for a few minutes on any one of the transcontinental highways and note the tourists who have their bedding and baggage piled in and tied to the sides of their cars. Note the brown and healthy faces of the brown-clad travelers. Dust has no horrors to them; they expect it; they are prepared for it. Their khaki clothing cost little when purchased and wears well, and even if thrown away at the end of the journey has more than paid its way. The author of “Let me live by the side of the road and be a friend to man” could certainly enjoy himself during these mid-summer gypsying days. For one has the world brought to his own dooryard. Wait and there will come to you Maine, and California, and Texas, and Oregon, Michigan, Canada, Mexico. A man drove on my driveway a few days ago and used my hose to wash Texas soil from his fenders, and now that yellow dirt is nourishing a spirea bush in Nebraska.

Come around in the evening just after the supper, not dinner, utensils have been cleared away, and from these roadside campers in the course of the summer you may hear the Vermonter drop the “r” from “qua’teh” and put it into “idear,” the Georgian with his delightful Southern drawl, a Minnesotan with high-pitched voice and Scandanavian accent, or a musically soft Spanish from the Rio Grande regions. All the world’s make of automobiles may be inspected, their good and bad features discussed. Outing outfits of all characters and descriptions from the small compact bundle scarcely big enough for a flea, to the cumbersome behemoth mountain of canvas, boxes, and poles. There is the man who believes Detroit is destined to be the largest city in the world, and the man who is certain nothing can compare with Los Angeles. Truly the man who lives beside the road may have, if he is endowed with gumption, a joyful time as the perennial reel runs on.

But if such things come to the man who sits in his house beside the road and watches the race of men go by, what must be the feelings of the man of gypsying instinct as he climbs into his car, caring not for time or place, who has not painstakingly scheduled his route and must perforce make a certain hotel every night, who is no “speed lizard” but expects to take in as he journeys along all the scenic beauties and interesting features along the way. His only care is to head-about at the proper time to bring him home again at the end of his vacation.

It is estimated that more than a million persons are following some such nomadic life each year in the United States. The term “motor-gypsy,” has been quite definitely applied by the people to those who tour leisurely and camp more or less as they go. A part of the people set aside six months or a year to a long tour, seeking the north, south, coast or mountain as fancy, heat and cold dictate, a greater number travel from two to four months, going one year to the Michigan forests, another to the lakes of Wisconsin and Minnesota, passing through the great granaries of the world to the cooling breezes of Colorado, ambling along the coast to Georgia and Florida, following the windings of the Mississippi to the old Creole districts of Louisiana, up the Platte or through the Black Hills, to trout fishing in Wyoming, or stopping at the borders for walking trips over the wildernesses in the Yellowstone and Glacier National parks. The entire expanse of a most wonderful nation is open to the motor-gypsy.

Camping Grounds.

—So important has this sort of travel become that it is estimated that about 3000 cities and towns over the country, beginning in the Middle West and now spread to both coasts, have public automobile camping grounds for the traveling visitors. These are provided and kept up by the cities themselves or by chambers of commerce or automobile clubs; sometimes by combinations of these organizations.

The question often arises, “Does it pay?” From a financial standpoint it probably pays the community as a whole even if every individual who subscribes does not receive reimbursement. In the first place the tourist’s impression of a city is influenced by the treatment he receives. If an effort is made to furnish him with a safe and comfortable camping site and with facilities for cooking and cleaning he returns home with praises for that city. He tells other tourists that he meets on the way, he tells his neighbors after he gets home, and other and still other tourists come. On the contrary if no provision is made for the tourist, if he is not met with a glad hand he naturally warns others to keep away or plan to pass through in the daytime, spending what spare time they have farther on in more hospitable centers.

Secondly, tourists always spend some money for food and supplies, for gasoline, tires, accessories, repairs, and with increasing frequency for hotels. Clothing and dry-goods stores profit to some extent. Since thousands of dollars are brought to those towns lying on the main thoroughfares having good camping facilities, and since this money will be respent by those receiving it directly, the entire community in the long run benefits by the touring traffic. Denver possibly averages 400 to 500 campers per day during the summer season. Omaha, Kansas City, Lincoln, Deadwood and all the smaller places to the Rocky Mountains entertain from 25 to 100 per day. The actual tourists are many more, for not nearly all camp along the way. The Omaha Auto Club registered cars in 1921 carrying over 40,000 tourists. Other gateways passed fully as many, and not nearly all took the trouble to look up the club office to register. During the winter season the gypsying traffic turns south and Georgia, Florida, and on west to California, benefit by it.

A traffic census made simultaneously on eighteen Nebraska roads, distributed widely over the state, of vehicles passing in one week (August 20-26, 1922), showed a total of 88,958 divided as follows: