Vintage travel advertisements are often delectable to admire. Awash in sentimentality and devoid of any hassles involving travel, they conjure up exactly what they’re supposed to – a longing to get away and enjoy some other place. The only thing better is when the visuals themselves include automotive or driving imagery.
Travel ads featuring cars (or at least roadways) were relatively common from the 1930s through the 1960s, and I have collected some particularly interesting examples for this multi-part series.
This series will go in roughly chronological order, and in Volume 1 here we’ll look at advertisements promoting New Mexico, Germany and Oregon – all beckoning tourists to drive on over and spend some time. So enjoy spending some time admiring these ads and their backstories.
NEW MEXICO, 1937
Illustrated travel art often evokes a yearning for bygone days, and this 1937 ad from the New Mexico State Tourist Bureau is no different – with its deliberately anonymous streamlined roadster, dreamy scenery and friendly public servant. However, the most interesting part of this ad is that it subtly addresses a quirk in US interstate travel that has been lost to time. Several states, including New Mexico, operated border checkpoints called “ports of entry” where drivers were often hassled and squeezed for money by state authorities. This ad, published shortly after the state eliminated such checkpoints for noncommercial vehicles, tried to restore the state’s reputation among American travelers.
New Mexico, and several other western states operated ports of entry on major roads. At these checkpoints, officials would collect fees from travelers (drivers license fees, gasoline taxes, etc), even for private vehicles. New Mexico’s ports of entry were particularly onerous – tourists often reported being “cross-examined” by port employees and charged arbitrary fees. Some travel guides even advised cross-country drivers to steer clear of New Mexico to avoid these extorsions annoyances.
New Mexico liberalized its Port of Entry laws in 1937, exempting tourists from most fees, and in the process rebranded the facilities as “Ports of Welcome” instead. Doing so ushered in what we now refer to as welcome centers. In their early years, these Ports of Welcome were staffed with uniformed state employees who provided tourist information and assisted travelers in trip planning. This Gateways ad was an attempt to publicize that New Mexico now welcomed those tourists it had once been thought to repel.
New Mexico still operates ports of entry – mandatory stops for commercial vehicles on major routes – and these are sometimes co-located with tourist information centers that distribute maps and brochures to travelers. Modern drivers don’t quite expect to be “welcomed as would befit a royal traveler,” as stated in the 1937 ad, but folks are likely glad to see clean facilities and helpful staff. Few travelers, though, who wander into a visitor center such as this one can imagine the history of these stops, or how their creation was worthy of a national advertising campaign.
GERMANY, 1938
When one thinks of late 1930s Germany, “tourism” isn’t usually the first thing that comes to mind. It wasn’t for most Americans at the time either, and Germany’s government created the German Railroads Information Office to address negative perceptions of their country. Of course, this was no ordinary tourism agency. It was an arm of the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda – its mission wasn’t primarily to bring American visitors across the Atlantic, but rather to counter what it saw as critical disinformation against the Third Reich.
Throughout the 1930s, this Office became increasingly busy, and at around the time this ad was published, its staff moved to the Renaissance-style Manhattan building shown on the bottom-right. The building itself, incidentally, had an automotive background. Since its construction a decade earlier, it had been used by the Uppercu Cadillac Corp. as a “salon” for custom-built cars.
For its promotional shot here, the Propaganda Ministry used a view of Heidelberg Castle from across the Neckar River. But more prominent than the castle or Heidelberg’s Old Bridge is the car in the foreground… and this isn’t a typical workaday car. It’s an Audi 225 Front Roadster, one of only two built (as prototypes) for the 1935 Berlin Motor Show. Though one of the most beautiful designs of the 1930s, this roadster is a bit of an oddity in a tourist shot, being a concept car from three years earlier. And with only two built, a tourist – or anyone else for that matter – would be rather unlikely to see one. Still, it made for a picturesque scene and the Propaganda officials likely thought it highlighted Germany’s technological prowess and aesthetic qualities.
But let’s end on a positive note here. Although neither of the original two Audi 225 Front roadsters survived, Audi re-created this spectacular car for its 2009 centennial celebration. The re-creation now resides at the Audi Museum Mobile in Ingolstadt – so unlike in the 1930s, visitors to Germany today can easily find one of these cars if so desired, and admire it up close.
OREGON, 1948, 1952 and 1955
Following World War II, advertisements seeking the attention of American tourists proliferated, as families found themselves with more resources, and an increased ability to travel. Oregon was among the most prolific advertisers in this era, with the State Highway Commission (parent agency of the Travel Information Division) setting aside $175,000 in 1949 alone for print advertising. Similar ad outlays were made throughout the early 1950s. Advertisements like these appeared in magazines such as National Geographic, The Saturday Evening Post, Cosmopolitan and scores of other publications.
The 1948 ad above was one of the first in this series, featuring two tourists photographing Salt Creek Falls next to their DeSoto.
This 1952 ad, showing two couples parking their Studebaker in a meadow beneath South Sister Mountain, is an example how some things have barely changed over seven decades.
Panoramic Google image located here.
Here’s a modern scene from the same vantage point, courtesy of Google. Seventy-one years later, tourists still wander the same meadow enjoying the mountain views… though the parking area is cordoned off, and there are no more grazing cattle.
Our third Oregon ad here was published in 1955, though it features a Plymouth woody wagon that was at least 6 years old at the time. The picnicking couple seem to be waving at the woody’s driver, so maybe they’re thinking “Wow, out here in Oregon, people still drive those old cars!” Not too many six-year-old wagons would serve as suitable focal points for a tourism ad, but this woody accomplished its job well.
And this is another example of time-stands-still scenery. The photo was taken at a lodge along the Metolius River near Camp Sherman. That lodge property is now a resort, and a 2013 Google review photo (left, above) was taken from exactly the same vantage point – notice even the mountain snow line is the same. It would be awfully tempting for a Plymouth woody owner to head up there and try to re-create the shot!
Other installments in the Auto-Related Travel Ads series:
Volume 2: Canada, Bermuda, Las Vegas & Valley Forge
As a kid, I wrote letters. Lots of them. To former presidents, baseball stars, celebrities, and for free vacation catalogs and road maps from many US states. Upon arrival, I would thumb-tack the road maps on the bedroom walls I shared with my two brothers. My parents remarked, “we don’t have to paint this way, so we’ll tolerate all the little thunb-tack holes.
Consequently, I could locate nearly anything located in the US. Hours and hours, I would stare and study all that year’s literature and plan trips. We always traveled from Chicago towards to Pacific, so I would map out routes and my father would ask me what I had planned. No human could have foretold how, decades later, I would come to personally visit and study 49 of our 50 states by the time I was 35. And get paid to do it too!
Today I tell my GPS-addicted children that I could parachute blindfolded anywhere in the Continental US and not need a map to get directly home. This is why Paul’s trips across the Great Basin is so fantastic to me – I am not as familiar with that section of it, and am dying to get to Frenchglen. I want to see the Donner and Blitzen rivers. Steen’s Mountain has been on my computer monitors since he wrote about his last trip.
I wore out all those travel brochures. I still have some of the maps though. They are brittle and delicate with worn folds and missing corners. More than a few are framed professionally and are hanging in my house. For the past thirty years, my art work uses old road maps as canvas and I have won some competitions with one of them, now hanging in my living room. That’s Chicago for you – we’re halfway to anywhere in the US, so going to Key West, Eastland Maine, Port Angeles Washington, or San Diego seems possible.
I did a similar thing as a kid. I insisted on buying a new road atlas ever year, and I loved writing away for travel information from places I’d likely never go. I could (and still can) spend hours just looking at maps.
For me, the highlight of such brochure collection was when I was about 12, my folks took me on a day trip to Washington, DC. Once there, they happened to have parked in front of an embassy, and I asked if we could go in. My folks had no idea… so we gave it a try. We walked right in, and I asked the front desk attendants if I could have information about their country. Surprisingly, they said yes, and then we spent the rest of the afternoon walking to about 20 embassies collecting information. I doubt people can do that sort of things these days, but back then I found it fascinating.
Very interesting subject. I would never identify that Audi.
Thanks. That Audi was a tough one to identify! I looked at a lot of pictures trying to get it right – it helped that the car in the ad appeared to be white, and that the Audi prototypes were white too.
Great post.
No doubt the graphic artist who did the 1955 Oregon ad thought a woody wagon would be the coolest choice. Odd that they didn’t pick a 1954 or ’55 Ford (fake but convincing wood) Country Squire for a more aspirational and current look. Of course an artist can slip a favorite car or other personal choices into the design. They didn’t find it in Google Images.
The history of Chrysler Corp wagons in the first real postwar body era 1949-52 is more complicated than you might think and different for each brand, although they all shared a lot of the basic body as usual. Plymouth wagons were all four door woodies with a lot of wood structure and door cards (if not as all-wood as earlier woodie wagons were) the first year. In 1950 the (shorter body, I think) all metal two door version came out and the next year the four door woody was gone. Similar thing with Dodges except they kept the four door body, just in all metal.
The two door Plymouth wagons were no doubt a whole lot cheaper not to mention a whole lot easier to maintain than the woodies were. They were all over the place back then.
It turns out that there were 1949 Plymouth two door metal wagons but not in the brochures. That version came out later in the model year. The one in the ad is a 1949. The upper tailgate window got unsplit for 1950 – well, at some point. The remaining Chrysler woodies were all metal with decals by 1951 even though it was still the same basic car. It’s always complicated with 1950-60’s Mopars.
I did not know of the shenanigans that took place at Ports of Entry in some states. Who would have thought?
Every one of those Oregon locations is extremely familiar to me. Salt Creek Falls is just 50 minutes up Hwy 58, and a regular go-to spot for hiking to Vivian Lake in the summer and snow shoeing in the winter.
South Sister is the tallest mountain close to us, and I’ve climbed it several times (not technically difficult but a pretty grueling 5,000′ ascent, much of it on steep loose volcanic scree. We’re actually hoping to do it again in September.
And the magical Metolius River is a favorite spot for us too. We stayed at a little resort there the first time with my parents in 1998 with a view almost exactly the same as the one shown.
I did a post about one of our camping trips to the Metolius, which included another vintage shot that also featured a woodie wagon, a Buick, in this case:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/auto-biography/van-tripping-chronicles-the-magical-metolius-river-and-the-first-breakdown-and-fix/
From what I know, the Ports of Entry checkpoints started with Kansas, which began charging tax on the gas in vehicles’ tanks when they entered the state. It then grew from there – about a half-dozen western states had some variation on this.
New Mexico was the worst. Among other things, they required that drivers obtain a temporary NM drivers license, obtainable only at the Ports of Entry. Police elsewhere in the state would often stop out-of-state drivers and check for this license – and in the process issue a bunch of other tickets. The issue of these ports of entry was a significant factor in the 1935 governor’s election, and the winning candidate was the one who pledged to reform the system – hence the transformation into “ports of welcome.”
I had a feeling you’d be familiar with some of these Oregon locations. I’ve only been to Oregon once, when we took a week and largely circled the state – would love to go again.
As a kid I loved leafing through old LIFE magazines, more for the ads than for anything else. I remember how alluring those old ads about travel were – whether the travel was by road, railway, air or ocean liner.
That New Mexico ad almost looks like it has snow covered fir trees – not exactly the picture that comes to my mind when I think of New Mexico. And I had no idea about the border hassles from the days of yore. 1937 was only 25 years after statehood, so I wonder if those border shenanigans were holdovers from the days when New Mexico was a Territory. The 1930s also saw several Supreme Court cases that gave some muscles to the commerce clause of the constitution, so as to prohibit states from interfering with interstate commerce.
I love this idea for a series, and am looking forward to more!
When looking into this topic, I searched (albeit briefly) for court cases that challenged the constitutionality of these border checkpoints, but found none. That surprised me, since there seemed to be plenty of questionable stuff going on (both on the commercial and noncommercial end of things). Of course I may have missed something, but I’m wondering of these ports of entry were sort of a flash in the pan, and the trend petered out before they challenges made it to the Supreme Court. I’d love to know.
I am not aware of cases that specifically cited these laws (it has been many years since I took classes in constitutional law), but cases in other areas made it very clear that federal interests in not impeding commerce between states were paramount and would knock down any laws that tried erecting such barriers. I’m pretty sure that everyone knew which way the legal winds were blowing in the mid 1930s.
What a great article, and I very much look forward to the rest of the series!
I had absolutely no idea of the “port of entry” thing in NM or any other state. Wow…absolutely wow. Not to get political, but this brings to mind something that I think about when hearing present-day news about how certain states may want to secede from the US and/or become somehow more separate than is currently the case…and I feel “Oh, no one would ever put up with that for no other reason than freedom to travel freely across state borders is something that everyone just expects.” Well geeze…this means that less than 100 years ago that wasn’t always possible? I had no idea.
It seems that we’ve come a long way from discouraging the crossing of state borders to realizing the benefits of encouraging travel and tourism. Let’s hope it stays that way. The last thing we need is fewer people experiencing what they don’t already know.
It’s interesting that you talk about “time stands still scenery” in this article. I was going to comment on just that point re. your photos in response to yesterday’s article about travel scenery. So many of those scenes look identical today as they did 75 years ago…just with different vehicles. Amazing.
Thanks!
I wouldn’t be surprised if state acts of “discouraging the crossing of state borders” resurfaces, but under the guise of electronic tolling, which is now easy to implement. Sure hope not.
Glad you like the Then-and-Now photos – there’s a few more to come in future installments.
I had no idea about the “ports of entry” in New Mexico or other states – fascinating! Incidentally, it is my understanding that even now some folks don’t realize that New Mexico is part of the US – so much so that the state tourism magazine has a monthly feature called “One Of Our Fifty Is Missing” where residents and visitors share tales such as not being able to have something shipped domestically to NM or being asked if a passport is necessary to visit. I imagine that the “ports of entry” only added to this confusion.
It was interesting to read the copy of the German advertisement. I love modern Germany and am grateful to have spent considerable time there in the 1990s not long after reunification.
If I saw such an ad written in 1995 I wouldn’t think much of it except to concur enthusiastically.
But for 1938? It is quite jarring to read Berlin described as “gay” and “dynamic” when that was precisely what the Nazis eliminated in their reign of terror. Granted “gay” had a different meaning in that context but if you’ve ever seen “Cabaret”, the somewhat obscure but chilling 1997 film “Bent” (starring Clive Owen, Ian McKellen, and Mick Jagger), or the more recent Netflix movie “Eldorado” then you know exactly what I mean.
Since the 1960s, New Mexico’s license plates have been labeled “New Mexico USA” – I suppose to make extra sure that people know what country it’s in.
And yes, that Germany ad’s text it creepy in retrospect. A good lesson in why not to believe everything we read!
“Come visit our country- but if you’re on our enemies list, you can never leave.”
Wonderful images here .
I hope everyone reading this takes some sort of cross country auto tour, I like the older, narrower roads the best my self .
-Nate