Vintage photos show what cross-country road trips looked like in the 1960s

Americans were ready to begin cross-country road trips that would be taken by other families for decades to come.

With the baby boom underway, American families were growing and ready to explore in their new cars.

"The nation's railroads were in stark decline by the 1960s, [and] taking a trip by car was the most viable option," Allen Pietrobon, who teaches a course at Trinity Washington University examining the meaning of the great American road trip, told BI.

But it didn't mean all journeys were smooth.

Author Richard Ratay said that while automobiles were on the rise, his family didn't have the biggest confidence in theirs.

"It wasn't a matter of 'if' you were going to break down, but when," he said.

For Ratay's family, every trip would start with his father stopping at Kmart to stock up on equipment for the inevitable breakdown. Ratay said he has plenty of memories of standing on the side of the road, watching his older brother use a wire coat hanger in an attempt to fix to the family car. 

Sparked by President Dwight D. Eisenhower — who wanted the military to be able to move freely across the country in the most efficient way possible, according to the US Army — the interstate system was launched in 1956. With a looming fear of atomic attacks, it was also designed as a way for people to easily escape cities.

Pietrobon said this was a win-win partnership, where car manufactures would convince Americans to hit the road in their new vehicles, encouraging them to visit specific cities with unique charm. That way, the automobile industry took off, as did tourism. 

In a time when Americans were unfamiliar about the way of life even just a few states over, sometimes seeing an ad for The World's Only Corn Palace in South Dakota was enough to get the whole family on the road to find out more.

Sometimes families would be encouraged to veer off course by an eye-catching billboard. Other times, they would get recommendations from someone they met on the road.

In Cabazon, California, gigantic dinosaurs would greet families pulling into the parking lot.

The cross-country road trip honored the saying "it's about the journey, not the destination."

Ratay remembers his father wanting to squeeze every drop of gas from the car, oftentimes leaving the family stranded on the side of the road with an empty tank. 

Families would pull into the campground, park the station wagon, pop open the camper, and set up camp. Campgrounds were a great way to meet others and exchange travel tips. 

Before we had tiny homes, we had pop-up campers. Campers would latch on to the back of the family Vista Cruiser and carry the camping gear, chairs, guitars, endless snacks, and toys.

A bike ride along a glistening lake or through a forest was a great way for a family to spend time together outside of the car. For some, getting into nature was a completely new experience.

With people from all regions under one roof, motels were a unique hotspot to begin to learn about other parts of the country.

Ratay said he felt like he was a part of a "fraternity of travelers" all on similar trips with different stories to share.

Adults would sit poolside and exchange stories of getting lost or ask other families about the best roadside attractions. 

For a lot of families, getting the chance to ride in a motorboat or try kayaking was a completely new adventure.

Any motel that had mini golf, shuffleboard, or ping pong was a huge find. 

Baseball was America's favorite sport throughout the '60s, and a pick-up game of catch was a way to get the body moving after spending all day in the car. Fishing, soccer, rollerblading, and card games also kept kids engaged. 

Ratay remembers getting to a motel and rushing straight to the game room until he had to go to sleep. The chance to make a new friend or two was always a plus.

Road-trip games were essential for keeping everyone entertained for hours in the car.

The alphabet game, license plate game, car bingo, and the timeless game of Mad Libs carried families through never-ending corn fields and desert plains. 

Half of the adventure of road tripping was staying on track. With a sole paper map (that could easily fly out the back of your Lincoln Continental convertible), if you made a few wrong turns, you were faced with stopping the car and asking a stranger for help. 

Ratay remembers his sister sitting on the armchair rest between his mother and father in the front of the car, referencing a printed flip-book map from AAA. Like most families, their plan was to drive from the top of the page to the bottom, and when you reached the end, you would simply flip to the next page and keep going. 

Finally people were tasting new cuisines, hearing different accents, and learning firsthand about different ideologies. 

Ratay recalled stopping in New Orleans, where he tried new dishes including po'boys and okra, which were completely foreign to a family from Wisconsin. He also observed different lifestyles as they cruised down the road, noticing active sharecropper shacks and parents doing manual labor with their children in the fields. 

Pietrobon said when African Americans were at home they knew their go-to "safe" spots where they could go out to eat or refill on gas, but hitting the road meant giving up that security, and oftentimes African Americans would try to reach their destination as quickly as possible, a stark contrast to how white Americans valued the journey over the endpoint. 

If Ratay's father ever ran out of gas, he would stick his thumb out on the side of the road, hitchhike to the nearest service station, and eventually return with enough gas to get the car to the rest stop. 

For an African American traveler, running out of gas on the side of the road would not necessarily promise the same outcome. 

Pietrobon said that "even rest-stop picnic areas and vending machines were frequently segregated," and African Americans used this book as a method to avoid humiliation or at worse, a dangerous situation. After the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the book was no longer published.

The movie "Green Book" depicts the travels of a Black musician and his chauffeur using the book as a guide to find lodging and do business.

Travelling went beyond sight-seeing and the feat of making it across the country. The exploration itself began to shape Americans.

"What a road trip provides to American life is the fact that if you've done that sort of exploration once, it makes it easier to do it again," Pietrobon said, "i.e. to risk a change and take that new job; to move to a new city; to be more adventurous in life overall."

"Traveling ... is what gives Americans their rugged drive and sense of individualism," he added. "It's what makes Americans tough."

Returning home from the road welcomed opportunities for change, and new narratives that could be passed along to others.

As siblings grew older and passed stories and lessons down to their children, they could reminisce over the adventures and unpredictable situations they handled together, as a family.