20 Vacation Spots That Defined The Golden Age Of The American Road Trip

Walt Disney’s Disneyland in Anaheim, California, opened on July 17, 1955, a day that became known among park insiders as “Black Sunday.” About 15,000 invitations were sent out, but more than 28,000 people attended due to counterfeit tickets. Only four lands were open: Main Street, Frontierland, Adventureland, and Fantasyland. Women’s high heels sank into the still-wet asphalt, and a plumbing strike meant drinking fountains didn’t work. Not exactly the Happiest Place on Earth that day!

By 1948, over one million people a year were visiting Yellowstone, the world’s first national park, created in 1872. The Old Faithful geyser erupts every 60–110 minutes, and families visited and stayed in roadside cabin camps while waiting to see it erupt. Bears were another popular attraction—tourists even fed black bears right out of their car windows, causing terrible “bear jams” before the practice was eventually made illegal.

Before 1959, it didn’t take a casino-hopping high-roller to travel from Key West to Havana; an American family could bring their car along, too. The daily S.S. City of Havana ferried as many as 500 passengers and 125 vehicles across the Florida Straits before Fidel Castro’s rise to power made such trips unfeasible. Cars could drive right off the ferry and onto the streets of Havana, leaving American families free to roam the city on their own wheels.

The Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania have a longstanding reputation as a destination for honeymooners and couples’ resorts, a tradition built on the marketing of the area to newlyweds that was already underway by the 1950s. Honeymooners and families came to the Poconos’ lakeside lodges for boating, dancing, and to enjoy the beauty of the mountains.

After Dreamland burned to the ground in 1911 and Luna Park met its fiery end in 1944, the Wonder Wheel (1920) and the Cyclone (1927) were the great standbys that held the beachfront fort through the 1950s, alongside Steeplechase Park. Coney Island remained a popular escape for New York’s working-class families, helped by the nickel subway fare that made getting to the beach remarkably affordable.

On June 27, 1954, Charles Wood opened a small theme park called Storytown U.S.A. near Lake George, New York, along Route 9. With attractions that included Mother Goose nursery-rhyme houses and swan boat rides, it was part of a movement in the mid-1950s for small, family-run, storybook theme parks that existed in concert with and in advance of Disneyland.

In 1881, a man named Doc Carver created a horse-and-rider act called the Diving Horse. Later, in 1928, Carver’s family turned it into a popular attraction at the Steel Pier on the Atlantic City boardwalk, which drew East Coast families looking for saltwater taffy, wicker rolling chairs, and live entertainment. The Diving Horse act continued through the 1950s.

After the war, a winter trip down U.S. Route 1 to Miami Beach became a popular getaway. As the number of tourists coming to Florida between 1940 and 1950 nearly doubled, from about 2.5 million to over 4.5 million tourists per year, the motor courts on Collins Avenue responded with neon lights, pools, and modern architectural styles.

Meramec Caverns became famous in part for the claim that outlaw Jesse James once used the Missouri cave as a hideout. There’s no evidence supporting the story, but it worked just fine as publicity. Lester Dill, who opened Meramec Caverns as a commercial attraction along Route 66 in 1933, spread the legend through nationwide bumper stickers, painted barn-roof slogans, and other innovative roadside ads. Who needs evidence when you’ve got really good advertising?

Cypress Gardens, a botanical garden and tourist attraction near Winter Haven, Florida, was opened by Dick and Julie Pope on Jan. 2, 1936. Hostesses in hoop skirts posed among the gardens, but the attraction eventually became famous as the self-proclaimed “Water Ski Capital of the World.” Its water-ski shows began in 1943 as a novelty act for WWII servicemen.

Union Pacific engineer James Curran invented the first chairlifts in 1936, using a design derived from banana loading conveyors in cargo ships. Averell Harriman was a railroad executive who, along with the Union Pacific Railroad, built the Sun Valley resort in Idaho, which opened on December 21, 1936. Union Pacific’s marketing efforts transformed skiing into a family vacation concept.

All-inclusive Catskill-area resorts such as Grossinger’s and the Concord and bungalow colonies catered primarily to Jewish American families who were barred from many mainstream mid-century resorts. The Catskills offered a wide range of amenities, from sports facilities to kosher-style cooking and comedy acts that helped performers such as Jerry Lewis launch their careers.

Ghost Town, the Western-themed section of Knott’s Berry Farm, has been cited as America’s first themed attraction area, with free admission in the 1940s and 1950s. Its creation stemmed from long waits for tables in the fried-chicken restaurant of the Buena Park, California, roadside berry stand of Walter and Cordelia Knott. As the Depression lengthened dinner queues into hour-long experiences in 1940, Walter Knott began relocating old Western buildings to his property.

Sculptor Gutzon Borglum led the carving of Mount Rushmore from 1927 until his death in March 1941. His son Lincoln Borglum then took over the project for its final seven months. Work stopped on October 31, 1941, with funds being redirected toward World War II, leaving the monument unfinished. Even so, Mount Rushmore continued to attract plenty of road-trip tourists to South Dakota’s Black Hills.

Mel Flath began Wisconsin Dells’ first Duck tours in August of 1946, transporting tourists on land and water in surplus World War II-era amphibious DUKW vehicles. Combined with a popular water-ski show brought by Tommy Bartlett in 1953 and the beauty of the river’s rock formations, these attractions helped to make the Dells a top tourism destination in the Midwest.

The wild rhesus monkeys at Silver Springs in Florida didn’t escape from a Hollywood film, as the popular story goes. Instead, a man known as Colonel Tooey reportedly released them around 1938 to enhance his Jungle Cruise tours. Glass-bottom boat tours over Silver Springs’ clear artesian springs had already been attracting tourists since around 1878, and the area later provided the perfect backdrop for underwater footage in Tarzan movies and the television series Sea Hunt.

In 1932, Garnet Carter created Rock City at the top of Lookout Mountain near Chattanooga. At the rock ledge in his attraction called Lover’s Leap, you could see seven states—or so they promised, although it may not have been true every single day. But it was Clark Byers who made the attraction legendary. From 1935 to 1969, the painter put “See Rock City” on more than 900 barns throughout dozens of states. Hard to miss that advertising on a road trip!

Great Smoky Mountains National Park, dedicated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on September 2, 1940, had become America’s most-visited national park by the 1950s. Post-war attraction factors included easy access (by car) from major Eastern cities, lack of admission cost, the growing popularity of scenic driving trips (Cades Cove), and the continuing growth of the gateway towns (such as Gatlinburg).

Reaching the South Rim of the Grand Canyon via Route 66, motorists could go on mule rides down the Bright Angel Trail and stay overnight in campgrounds and rustic lodges operated by the Fred Harvey Company. The inexpensive destination became a staple of the quintessential long-distance family trip in the West at the time.

During the 1950s tourism boom on Mackinac Island in Lake Huron, as everyone else in the country was zooming around in cars, visitors got around on foot, by bicycle, and by horse-drawn carriage. The reason was an ordinance passed on July 6, 1898, which banned horseless carriages from the island because they frightened the carriage horses. The rest of America embraced the automobile; Mackinac Island basically said, “We’re good.”

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