DRIVING : Hot on the Trail of Tin Can Tourists

The Los Angeles Recreational Vehicle Show, which runs through Sunday at the Pomona Fairgrounds, suggests that seeing America by motor home, trailer or camper is a thoroughly modern hobby. Truth is, motor homes were being built in 1915. The first RV club formed four years later and, by the early ‘30s, listed 100,000 members known as Tin Can Tourists.

Within that group were the Four Vagabonds--inventor Thomas Edison, car builder Henry Ford, tire man Harvey Firestone and naturalist John Burroughs.

Vehicles of this infancy--some with picnic tables doubling as beds built into running boards, others with stoves hooked to exhaust pipes for baking meatloaf while motoring--were a world away from Winnebagos.

David Woodworth of Tehachapi collects old tourers and has almost two dozen, including a tent trailer from 1916, a 1929 Wiedman motor home with a gasoline stove that lights like a blow torch and a Woodworth Camp Car built on the chassis of a 1933 Ford truck.

He still takes to the road in his relics but prefers his 1992 Jayco.

“The old days were fun,” he says. “But when it’s muggy and hot, there’s nothing like a modern motor home and turning on central air, getting a cool one from the refrigerator and popping dinner into the microwave.”