Emergency caravan. To provide temporary housing for defense workers while more permanent quarters are being built for them, this caravan of trailers crosses Memorial Bridge, Washington, D.C., on its way to Wilmington North Carolina. Trailers are being used all over the United States to provide this type of emergency defense housing. This caravan of 50 is the first shipment of more than 2000 currently being constructed

In the late 1910s, there were few gas stations, few paved roads, and no highways was a time that America’s leading historians call the beginning of modern RV. In 1920s people who traveled like this were referred to as 'tin can tourists'. As time progressed, trailers became attractive, comfortable and earned a new name "house trailer" in the 1930s and 1940s. In the late 1930s, during the Great Depression, FSA (Federal Farm Security Administration) built trailer camps to assist childless couples and families of one and two children in moving in areas where new factories were​ built, and labor was in demand. In 2005, FEMA provided temporary emergency housing using thousands of travel trailers.