Where the Vintage Trailer Fanatics Are

There’s nothing Johnny Agnew doesn’t like about vintage campers. As cofounder of Funky Junk Farms, a group of Americana aficionados with a passion for mobile homes, Agnew estimates he’s owned "at least" 100, including four that sit behind his Los Angeles area home right now. Though he says he’s not "outdoorsy," per se, he was drawn to trailer life after going on camping trips with his family as a kid and picking up his first trailer, a teardrop, when he was just 14. Forty-odd years later, Agnew has been recognized by his peers as a "pioneer" in the hobby, an honor he received while rolling deep with eight or nine other Funky Junk team members to the 2024 Modernism Week Vintage Trailer Show in Palm Springs, California. "Trailer people are like a family," he says. "And there’s something for everyone in this hobby depending on what your tastes are, from a teardrop to an Airstream to a Shasta."

All of those styles were represented in spades at the Vintage Trailer Show last weekend, as were other, less common brands, like Silver Streak, Serro Scotty, Zimmer, and Aloha. Made, mostly, between World War II and 1970, the 54 trailers on display were all driven to Palm Springs by their owners, who then opened their respective screen doors to ticket holders for tours. Now in its second decade, the show—which is typically held at the end of Modernism Week—drew about 2,000 people over two days, all of whom were welcome to check out everything from a beautifully restored wood-and-aluminum 1949 Spartan Royal Mansion to a tiny Airstream whose owners had modded it out to be used as a hangout during wedding receptions and live events. Trailer owners perched outside their campers in lawn chairs to chat with visitors and fellow enthusiasts, and visitors stopped at a camper canteen at the back of the lot to pick up a glass of lemonade, or a little Ball Jar full of cold, delicious pudding.

While vintage trailer rallies happen all over the country, the Palm Springs Modernism Week event is notable for its curation. Potential exhibitors have to apply and are selected by organizers Brad and Susan Taylor of Shiny Shacks, a vintage trailer business in Salem, Oregon. Only the best and most interesting submissions make the cut.

Exhibitors don’t just flaunt their hard work at the show, either: They also get to mix and mingle, both on-site and at Palm Springs’s Vagabond Motor Hotel, where they’re all lodged during the event. (The downtown Palm Springs lot where the event takes place isn’t exactly camper friendly, with no available water lines, toilets, or hookups. There is power for the event, but it’s run off a giant generator with cords that run behind each row of campers.) Each year, attendees and exhibitors select their festival favorites, which are honored at an awards show and cocktail party on Saturday night.

"This show draws a wonderful mix of people that are really engaged," says Brandon Williams, owner of both an outdoor fireplace company and a 1970 Airstream Ambassador. "You get to see all these one of a kind rarities, and a lot of the attendees are craftsmen who are really at the top of their game. It feels good to pick their brains, just to see what they create and how, because each person has a little bit of a different style or a way to do what they do."

"If you restore hot rods, for instance, then it’s more about the mechanics," says Jessica Campbell, showing off her 1965 Cardinal. "With vintage trailers, there’s a lot more interior design involved. You can pick your colors and go wild or, like with our other trailer, we went very neutral inside so, depending on the show, I can change out all the decor to a different color scheme and theme, whether it’s pink flamingos or metallic glamour."

Some owners like to steer their restorations strictly toward the original look of their trailer, whether that means a gleaming chrome exterior or shiny, shellacked wooden walls. Robert Kubik, whose 1949 Spartan Royal Mansion has both, loves the fact that his trailer was built by an aircraft company. "It looks like an airplane and is built like an airplane," he says, "but it’s got all this wood inside so you walk in and it just feels like it hugs you with its curves and warmth." 

Robert’s wife, Jessica, is enamored with the amount of storage they have in their 33-foot camper, which might look big compared to tinier vintage trailers but is actually dwarfed by modern RVs on most campgrounds. "You can camp in our trailer for weeks at a time and it just feels like you’re living somewhere new," she says. "You don’t have to have a brand new trailer to travel across the country. You just have to have intent, and you’ll be able to do it."

While the Kubiks love their Spartan, they—like a number of other exhibitors—were also using the event as a way to put their trailer on the market. They’re asking $100,000, which might seem high but is nothing compared to the cost of a new 33-foot Airstream, which goes for almost twice as much. A vintage trailer will also likely only appreciate, as well, while something brand new will almost certainly depreciate.

For other vintage trailer fans, though, there is a middle ground. When trailer restoration expert William Ward set out to revamp a 25-foot 1946 Spartan Manor for himself, he decided to forgo taking it back to its original look, choosing instead to give his midcentury camper a bit more modern flair. "We’ve done so many birch trailers for other people, so much walnut and maple, and you just get tired of it," he says. "It works for other people because they like that rich, beautiful shellacked wood, but for me, I thought, Let’s go a little out of the box and do a painted interior with white, solid surfaces and stainless steel." Everything in Ward’s Spartan is sleek, masculine, and multifunctional, right down to the four-square-foot "wet" bathroom, which wasn’t even a part of the vehicle’s original floor plan. ("Wet" means the shower and the toilet share the same space.) "Now," he says, "it’s a brand new trailer that can run safely down the road, but all inside that original shell."

That same kind of convenience didn’t speak to Curtis Richards when he picked up his ground level–entry 1949 Zimmer Wee Zim about two years ago. Only 40 Wee Zims were reportedly ever made and Richards’ is the only known survivor, making keeping the trailer’s original features a big priority to the owner. As an electrician by trade, Richards actually redid part of a restoration that had already been done on the trailer, taking out the existing modern USB sockets and installing period-correct GFCI screw-in glass fuses. "It’s all safe and everything works just like it did in 1949," Richards says, pointing out the trailer’s tiny two-burner stove, the foldout bed, and expandable entrance, which tips and folds into a perfect teardrop when it’s time to hit the road.

The number of late ’40s and early ’50s trailers at the show speaks not only to the popularity of that era’s aesthetic in modern collecting, but also to the skill that went into building each model. The 1950 Boles Aero on display, for instance, was made in Burbank, California, by a group of former Lockheed employees who banded together after WWII. Skilled in metalwork after years spent working on airplanes for the war effort, the Boles team was not only looking to use their craft, but also to fill a need—GIs coming home from war often needed places to live, and mobile homes were often the quickest, easiest, and most affordable answer.

"After the war, soldiers had to move to where the work was," says Paul Lacitinola, a 1948 Vagabond owner who has written two books on vintage campers and publishes Vintage Camper Trailers magazine. "You had a very mobile society, with people who had to move maybe every six months depending on their jobs. Trailers were more for that kind of life back in the day, whereas now we just use them to go on a trip over the weekend."

Because these trailers were often built so durably, they’re also fairly easy to work on today—provided you can get the parts for your build. John Belobraydic says he bought his 1962 Shasta Astroflyte on a bit of a whim during the pandemic, just to have a project to work on outside his house. He just liked the look of the body, and he figured the construction and layout were fairly simple. With a little time, 3-D printing, and a whole mess of YouTube videos about vintage campers, he was able to finish up his trailer, which he and his wife have painted a nice, bright, vintage orange and white. "I’ve remodeled houses and rooms before," he says, "and this just felt like I was doing a room in a house that just so happened to also be on the road."

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Top photo courtesy Palm Springs Modernism Week

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