Newz(AP) — There’s something about the American road trip. 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. 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. In gaining convenience, what have we lost? The decades after World War II were the golden age of the family road trip In “Are We There Yet?
The Golden Age of American Family Vacations,” historian Susan Rugh argues that the period after World War II 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 were eager to show their children what they had been fighting to preserve.
One popular destination was Washington, D.C. Families also visited historic monuments, homes and battlefields. In the West, the nation’s majestic national parks were both a tourist destination and a symbol of American democracy.
Traveling together to see America both strengthened family bonds and “provided a way to educate children as citizens,” Rugh writes. It wasn’t a golden age for everyone 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.
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