Tin Can Tourists pioneered RV travel in Florida. Here’s what it looked like back then

America’s first RV camper club, the Tin Can Tourists, which formed in Ybor City in 1919, marked the beginning of a new kind of tourism across the United States.

It was tourism that stressed friendship and shared experiences, pulling travel trailers and camping around the country. It also introduced many from the Midwest and Northeast to Florida sunshine during winter months.

Tin Can Tourists hit their peak of popularity during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

When Ybor City’s DeSoto Park, where the club was born, closed in 1924, many of the club members relocated to Braden Castle in Bradenton, said Forrest Bone, who ran the club from 1998 to 2019.

“In 1924, a committee was formed and the property now known as ‘Braden Castle Park’ was purchased. The property today consists of 200 lots, of which 198 are built on with small houses, a trailer park that has 94 mobile home sites and 10 spots for recreational vehicles. The location of the Park is on a point where the Braden River empties into the Manatee River,” according to the Braden Castle website.

The name Tin Can Tourists is thought to have come from the Model T Fords, nicknamed Tin Lizzies, which many members drove, and from the tins of canned food that many ate while on America’s rough and still developing road system of more than a century ago.

Airstream Travel Trailer owner demonstrates how to transport two bicycles along with his trailer. This is at the Airstream Rally on Coquina Beach in 1965.

“Travelers in these early automobiles modified them to include sleeping areas and kitchens, since hotels and restaurants were scarce along the rural routes where the new roadways passed,” Phaedra Carter said in a Bradenton Herald column in 2016.

Trailers and automobiles park under the trees at Braden Castle Tourist Camp in 1930.

A passion for vintage RVs

Forrest Bone, and his wife, Jeri, got into RV camping with an Airstream group in 1993.

“I grew up in a family of eight kids and didn’t get to do much traveling, said Forrest, 80.

“It gave us an opportunity to travel,” he said.

Over the years, Forrest and Jeri owned six travel trailers, most of them made in 1949. They started with vintage Airstream trailers and moved on to Spartan trailers.

One of their favorites was a Spartanette trailer that they found at the Manatee Trailer Park off State Road 64 East.

“We sold it once and then bought it back,” Forrest said.

Forrest and Jeri Bone, with their 1955 Trotwood Cub, part of a past Tin Can Tourist event at Lake Manatee State Park.

With each of their trailers, Forrest would handle the rehabilitation and Jeri the decoration.

Their travels over the year took them to most of the lower 48 states and as far as Arizona and California.

Faced with worsening traffic and more congested highways, the couple turn the club over to their son, Terry Bone, a few years ago. Terry is now club president.

“I miss it a whole lot. I miss the people. They are such a nice group. All you need to have is a vintage trailer and they will walk up and talk to you,” Jeri said.

“I miss all of my trailers. I got to decorate all of them and I love antiques and being around vintage objects,” she said.

Bringing it back home

In 2009, the the Tin Can Tourists held their 89th Annual Winter Convention at Lake Manatee State Park with about 50 rare travel trailers on display.

Forrest and Jeri brought their gleaming 1957 Avion trailer, which resembles the famous Airstream, to the Tin Can Gathering. Avion went out of business in the early 1970s, falling victim to the fuel shortage caused by the OPEC oil embargo.

Another couple brought their “canned ham” trailer, so named for its cramped space. Also on display was a “tear drop” model, which was too low to stand up in and had a pop-up hatch for cooking.

Attendees check out some of the antique trailers and motor homes on display during the Tin Can Tourists’ 89th annual Winter Convention at Lake Manatee State Park in 2009.

“The people who have these are very devoted to preservation and promotion,” Forrest Bone said in 2009.

The club also met up in the Bradenton area in 2007, 2008 and 2010.

However, it might be while before it returns.

“TCT has no current plans to host events in the Bradenton area as it has become a challenge to find parks that can accommodate 150-200 RVs for one weekend in the middle of the winter season,” Tim Heintz, the club’s Southeast regional representative said in an email.

“Our national winter convention has moved north of Tampa Bay in the area of Dunnellon the last weekend in February, Heintz said.

For their contributions to Tin Can Tourists, Forrest and Geri are scheduled to be inducted into then RV/MH Hall of Fame in Elkhart, Ind., in August.

“The major contribution of Tin Can Tourists to RV history in America was the creation of a community of like-minded people who could come together regardless of the type of RV they owned,” Andrew Woodmansey said in his book, “Recreational Vehicles: A World History 1872-1939,” published by Pen & Sword Books.

For more information about Tin Can Tourists, visit the club’s website.

Lawrence Perry sits in his American-manufactured 1956 King Midget which can pull the 200 pound trailer he made which has a small bed and slide-out kitchen at Lake Manatee where the Tin Can Tourists gathered.

Airstream Rally at Coquina Beach in 1965

An Airstream trailer awaits setup for a past Tin Can Tourists gathering at Lake Manatee in 2010.

Airstream Trailer Rally at Sarasota County Fairgrounds 1979.

For “Tin Can Tourists,” it may well be a match made in heaven: Hunt and Susan Jones’ lovingly restored 1955 GMC pickup matched with a 1962 Airstream Globe Trotter in 2007.

This story is one in a series the Bradenton Herald is producing to celebrate 100 years of publishing in Manatee County.