[Hurricane Katrina] New Orleans, LA, 1-17-06 -- Jessie Coleman and Matthew Wren hook a FEMA travel trailer up to be hauled to a staging area from the train unloading area. The FEMA Travel Trailer program was designed to get disaster victims in safe housing and back on the road to recovery quickly. MARVIN NAUMAN/FEMA photo

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.