Note on "mobile housing." Car and homemade trailer on U.S. 101 near King City. Man and wife, middle-aged, from Wisconsin to California. "Old Man Depression sent us out on the road. Been out two years. You don't know anything about how many people are living in trailers, till you 'hit' Florida"

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.