Americans on the road : from autocamp to motel, 1910-1945
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Americans on the road : from autocamp to motel, 1910-1945
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997
Johns Hopkins paperbacks ed
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Note
Originally published: Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, c1979
Includes bibliographical references (p. [195]-205) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Using travel magazines, trade journals and diaries, this text explores the use of cars in America and shows how autocamping as an inexpensive, individualistic recreational sport gave birth to the motel, a nationally standardized roadside business. Belasco begins his study with the earliest days of automobile travel in America, when travellers camped wherever they stopped along the roadside, "gypsying" in their cars or in tents, and moves on to chart the growth in the 1920s of free municipal campsites. As the cost of building and maintaining these campsites steadily rose, towns were forced to require patrons to pay a small fee, and the smell of money attracted entrepreneurs, who began building inexpensive restaurants and lodgings. In this way, Belasco writes, "the motel industry was born."
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