The Conklin Family Created the Hippy Van Travel Lifestyle in 1915

July 4, 2022

Tik Tok, YouTube, Instagram, and other social media platforms are full of vloggers posting about their hippy van travel lifestyle. You know what I mean … they have converted a van, bus, or trailer into a cozy, luxurious mini home on wheels and have taken to the highway. They travel from trendy location to trendy location, documenting their adventures for their devoted followers who are envious of their free-wheeling, nomadic lifestyle. The COVID pandemic made this lifestyle even more appealing. More and more people seized this opportunity to become digital nomads, working from the back of their hippy vans as they wandered around the country. 

The Gypsy Van, the forerunner of today's RVs and camper vans. (trottersrv.com)

What if we told you that the hippy van life – both traveling and sharing travel adventures with the public – is not a new phenomenon? In 1915, the Conklin family, Roland, Mary, and their children embarked on a cross-country trip in their “Gypsy Van”, a home on wheels that Roland Conklin designed and built. And the family’s travels were documented in a series of articles in the New York Times. Let’s learn about the start of the van life culture with these colorized photos. 

Who Were the Conklins?

The Conklin Gypsy Van of 1915. (motorizingnz.com)

In the early 1900s, the Conklin family was one of the country’s wealthiest families. In the 1870s, the family patriarch, Stanley L. Conklin built the family’s wealth through banking, real estate investments, mining, and stock investments. His sons established the American Motor Coach Company in 1901 in Chicago to manufacture motorized vehicles to transport groups of people and for public transportation.

The Gypsy Van

Camping was a popular pastime in the early 1900s, but not everyone wanted to give up all their creature comforts to spend time in nature. Roland Conklin wanted to find a good compromise between tent camping and hotel travel. He realized it would be nice to be able to bring one’s household belongings along when traveling. He went to work designing a motor coach with beds, a kitchen, storage space, and seating areas. There were throw pillows, decorative touches, a bookshelf stocked with books, a phonograph, a writing desk, and a rooftop garden. Conklin sought input from his wife, Mary, who helped him make sure that the space appealed to women as well. He named his motor coach the Gypsy Van, adopting the term from the types of wagon caravan homes that were traditionally used by the nomadic Gypsy people of Europe.