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‘Tin Can Tourists’ carry on spirit of auto…

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Bob graham, former florida governor and us senator, dead at 87, things to do travel, ‘tin can tourists’ carry on spirit of auto adventures to florida | commentary.

Orlando’s streets sported “a motley crew” in the 1920s — “sharpers, aristocrats, tough-looking women, get-rich-quickies, and just plain people,” wrote Lois Wilson, passing through on a motorcycle ramble with her husband, Bill, who would go on to co-found Alcoholics Anonymous.

“It looked like the world on wheels was coming to Florida,” noted Orlando’s indefatigable developer Carl Dann.

In those days, auto travelers soon acquired the nickname “Tin Can Tourists” — inspired by their attachment to the bring-along cuisine they packed into their autos.

“Never having been so far from their own kitchens, and unsure of what to expect in the way of provisions on the road, they loaded up with canned meat and canned vegetables and even canned fruit — they brought their own fruit to Florida,” writes historian David Thornburg.

Hoteliers and restaurant owners weren’t amused, and some Floridians were inspired to quip that many auto travelers arrived from the North with one shirt and one $20 bill — and, during their stay, they changed neither.

The feeling was mutual. A 1930s ad for travel trailers proclaimed that buyers could bring their own homes with them, as well as their food, and ignore not only restaurant prices but “the grasping hotel man,” too.

Call of the highway

These early highway adventurers heard the call of the road — often muddy, rut-filled roads that demanded frequent tire changes — and traveled to Florida in their tin lizzies in the decades before World War II.

It’s a heritage carried on by today’s Tin Can Tourists, a national club composed of owners and fans of vintage travel trailers and campers. Unlike some of the RVs we see traveling Florida’s highways, with their extendable extra rooms, the Tin Canners’ vintage rigs are the rolling equivalent of a bungalow.

The group traces its history to 1919 and the original club that embraced the “Tin Can Tourist” name, with members heading to Florida in winter. The group was still going strong in the 1940s, with 39,000 members at the beginning of the decade and 80,000 at the end.

In 1947, entertainment at the annual Tin Can Tourist winter confab in Florida included a band concert led by the “Toscanini of the Big Top” — Merle Evans, band director for Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus for more than 50 years.

By the late 1970s, the organization had pretty much evaporated, but in 1998 Michiganders Forrest and Jeri-Ann Bone, who wintered in Bradenton, revived the Tin Can Tourists as a rallying point for fans of antique travel trailers. The club is still going strong, looking toward its winter convention in Brooksville in February.

At home in Orlando

In the early days of auto travel, Tin Canners found a warm welcome in Orlando. Harry Hand, the twin brother of Orlando funeral-home pioneer Carey Hand, operated the Hand Tourist Camp on a 20-acre site between East South Street and East Central Boulevard in Orlando, which I’d guess occupied some of the land that’s now home to the city’s Mayor Carl T. Langford Park.

At the Hand Tourist Camp, the women of Orlando’s First Presbyterian Church started an outreach ministry to bring Sunday school to the children. Their efforts began in a tent, but with contributions from church members, they soon built a wooden chapel, named for Elder W.S. Branch, “at the crook of East Central,” according to the church’s official history by Nancy Abberger.

By 1925, the building had been covered in stucco, and pictures in the Orlando Sentinel in 1926 showed students on the playground of the Hand Tourist Camp Free Public School, “described as ‘the only one of its kind in the world,’ ” Abberger writes.

The small church building stood for years and has only recently been torn down; it was long memorable for its small “Jesus Saves” neon sign.

What’s going on

On Jan. 22, the current incarnation of the Tin Can Tourist club will visit Bartow and present a display of vintage campers and trailers from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. around the Polk County History Center, 100 E. Main St., Bartow.

The trailers and campers will be parked along Davidson Street and Central Avenue around the history center. Visitors can venture inside to learn more about the early days of Florida auto tourism and highways and many other varied aspects of Central Florida history, including Jacob Summerlin and the Summerlin Institute in Bartow, early Polk County attractions and Major League Baseball’s Detroit Tigers and their spring-training history in Polk.

For more about the Polk History Center, visit www.polk-county.net/history-center . For more Tin Can Tourists: The Original Vintage Trailer and Camper Club, including the group’s upcoming 103rd Winter Convention in Brooksville, Feb. 24-27, visit TinCanTourists.com .

Joy Wallace Dickinson can be reached at [email protected] , FindingJoyinFlorida.com , or by good old-fashioned letter to Florida Flashback, c/o Dickinson, P.O. Box 1942, Orlando, FL 32802.

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Tin Can Tourists

RV Lifestyle

Tin Can tourism is an anachronism that had its origins in Florida in 1919. The main purpose of the group was to have places where auto campers could come together for fun. The rapid growth in the twenties and thirties brought people from all over the country who wanted to become members, which they did by an induction of a secret password and handshake along with singing “The More We Get Together” as the official song. The group held its winter convention in Florida while its summer session was held in Michigan.

Tin Can Tourists History

Cars were just beginning to be mass-produced, so it is safe to say that the majority of the members were middle class Americans. As rustic as it may sound today, those cars were able to be outfitted, sometimes using attached tents, with the necessities to make a camping experience very enjoyable.

Initially, local people did not embrace the group, but as the membership grew from 30,000 to 100,000, cities began to tout their presence because they provided an economic boon to the area. Sarasota, Florida became the official site for the festivities in 1932 when the Chamber of Commerce worked to positively sway the public’s vote. The town merchants even provided transportation from the camp into town. However, by 1938, the city’s officials had decided they did not like the perception of Sarasota as a location for “tin canners,” and they would not renew the contract for that winter.

• The specter of World War II
• Economic recession
• The formation of the Automobile Tourists Association
• A split in the Tin Can Association echelon

Tin Can Tourists Today

The club went out of existence in the mid-1980s, but it was revived in 1998 and included all vintage coaches. They held the rebirth rally in Milford, Michigan with twenty-one rigs in attendance. More members were accepted by the end of that year. The Tin Can Tourists returned to Florida for its 2008 convention. They now conduct their gatherings in Florida, Michigan, and various other locations throughout the country. Its popularity has spread to France, Japan and England. The latest version of the Tin Can Tourists abides by the original principles and objectives but has added the goal of promoting and preserving vintage coaches.

The Tin Can Tourists Club was the forerunner of today’s RV travel. They were a far cry from current camping styles, where campers travel to sites in luxury motorhomes or have tents that are comfortable and easy to assemble. As the interest grew in this type of adventure travel, automobile makers added house cars to their production. The Coach Trailer Manufacturers’ Association was born out of the interest in this type of recreation. Manufacturers of camping trailers began exhibiting models of their products at these gatherings. As travel trailers developed and became more comfortable, more people became interested and the idea mushroomed.

Tin Can Tourists camping in Zephyrhills, FL. Photo credit tincantourists.com

It is interesting to note that the name of the original “Tin Canners” came from the notion that they mainly ate canned food. At least, that is one speculation. Their emblem was a tin can on the radiator cap. Today’s Tin Can Tourists display a metal emblem on the front of the car. Contemporary travel trailers, motorhomes, and campers have the comforts of home, including ovens, bathrooms, televisions, and microwaves that can prepare food pretty much as you would at home. Some even have dishwashers and laundry facilities.

As the oldest of the national trailer organizations, the Tin Canners have evolved into a club that is 97,000 members strong. They still have as their aim gathering to have fun. Most of them spend several months at a time in their trailer, and they are strict about safeguarding the hygienic nature of the campsites and being friendly and helpful to fellow campers. For more information on the Tin Can Tourists, please visit their website, tincantourists.com .

RV travel today in Florida offers campers a vast array of parks and camping areas in which modern campers delight. Things to do are also plentiful – hiking lush or rustic trails, swimming, boating, kayaking, horseback riding – just to name a few. The weather is pleasant and the accommodations are first rate. RVing in Florida offers a destination unlike other experiences you may find. The state is very welcoming to campers and goes out of its way to provide the interests and accommodations that everyone will enjoy.

get the official RV ers guide to Florida

The Fascinating History of the Tin Can Tourists

The new way to travel posed a few problems for tourists.

The horseless carriage was the newest innovation in travel at the end of the Victorian era, one which would change how we built our cities and where we lived. By 1920 cities and towns across the world had begun to make room for the fast-moving machines, as well as to provide parking and new safety laws to manage them. Around the same time the trailer age began. As cars became more powerful and efficient, they were in turn capable of hauling small trailers. This would become the start of an entire movement which would later encompass the famous Airstream trailers and which evolved into a growing RV market. And, one group was there from the beginning: the Tin Can Tourists.

Founded in 1920 the group would not have been able to form sooner even if they had wanted to. One side effect of a changing rapidly from horse and buggy to automobiles was that the roads were not yet suited for long distance car travel. The smooth and pristine highways as we know them today only began in earnest in the 1920s, although a proper interstate system in the U.S. was not completed until 1992! The initiative for the current interstate highway system was enacted in 1956.

In 1920 there were only a handful of interstate highways, one of which spanned from New York to Florida- a common vacation trail. This led to people using camping trailers in order to make camping easier on their vacations to sunny Florida.

Previous travel arrangements would have entailed either arriving by hired horse-drawn coach or by train, neither of which required a parking spot or a place to camp. Tourists would then stay in a hotel or with relations, excepting those who camped on rural fishing and hunting retreats.

The Tin Can Tourists group was started in 1919 in Desoto Park, Tampa, Florida . The idea behind the club was to create clean and safe parks for members to stay at- something which was not yet a priority for motor tourists.

There was a secret handshake, secret sign, and password that only members of the group could know. As car ownership increased in the 1920s, so too did membership in the club. Their club song was “The More We Get Together” and they frequently assembled in large numbers, creating camps and parks that catered to the needs of the trailer traveler. In 1932 estimates of club membership range from 30,000 to as many as 100,000! Their summer and winter conventions, however, were not always welcome. Hundreds of cars (many with trailers and/or tents) all convening in one place was quite the spectacle (and nuisance) in those years.

The club endured, however, after some venue rearrangements, just in time to see the decline of the organization firstly due to the Great Depression, and then by the gas rationing and metal shortages of World War II. However, an even bigger source of hardship came from rival club, Automobile Tourists Association , which drew in members which would have previously only had one club to be a part of. By the 1960s the Tin Can Tourists club was flagging and they held one last convention in 1968.

In 1998 the club got a reboot as an all-vintage car and trailer group which meets in Michigan for regular Gatherings. This required a new registration of the name since it had not officially been in use for some time. The club is open to all who appreciate vintage cars and campers, even if you don’t own any!

Hillsborough County's Palm River is south of State Road 60 / Adamo Drive and flows into McKay bay south of Ybor City. Upstream, the Palm River bends towards the north and was called Six Mile Creek. Here was where Plant's railroad first entered the area. In the first half of the 20th century if you were traveling into Tampa from Brandon, Plant City, Lakeland or any other community to the East you had to travel down Broadway over an old bridge spanning Six Mile Creek. Surrounding the bridge was the small community of Six Mile Creek that contained a market and service station ready to meet the needs of travelers. When settlers first came to the area they set up farms along the creek and river. As the area grew industrial factories began to set up shop near the creek and river shores.  

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Tin Can Tourists

The Original Vintage Trailer and Camper Club

2024 Rallies

Planning for 2024 is well underway and 18 rallies have been added to the Tin Can Tourists website so far. Click here to see our event listings!

Events Calendar

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Upcoming Events

One mother of a camping trip and oh the views.

If you host a rally or know of one not listed yet, please let us know so we can help get the word out!

Hi, I’m Rick Fischer, Executive Director of Rolling Into Roanoke Inc. a 501c3 non-for-profit organization. We put on a fundraiser event for the community of Roanoke IN, Huntington County and The Auburn Cord and Duesenberg Automobile Muesum as well as the National Auto and Truck Musuem and the Early Ford Muesum in Auburn IN. This is our 11th year and every year I have a theme, and this year is “Crossroads of America” a focus on family vacations on historic highways and bi-ways like Route 66, Lincoln Hwy, US 1 Pasific Coast, Atlantic coast 1, Blue Ridge Parkway and Historic US 40 and all the roadside attractions memories along the way to the finial destinations. So, we’re featuring vans, station wagons and vintage/retro campers with a temporary KOA setup in the Roanoke Park for those who like to attend and camp Friday night before Saturday’s main event on July 27th, 2024, from 10AM to 3PM show hours for the public. The camp area is on grass but with no utility’s, no big campfires, but restrooms will be open. We average around 500 cars and 5k to 6k spectators each year. You can learn more on our website and Facebook page. Please reach out to me for more info and how we can get the word out to your followers. Thanks again. Rick

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