In the early 1950s, campers had to be industrious. Tent trailers were a rare commodity, so avid travelers built their own. Eugene Lewis Vesely was one of those people. While planning for a family excursion to Alaska, he built a collapsible tent atop a boat trailer. The trip never happened, but a business—Vesely Manufacturing Company—was born.
Based in Michigan, Vesely started with soft-topped tent trailers, offering a range of styles and price points, adopting the brand name Apache. (our archival photo shows the Golden Eagle and, near as we can tell, an early version of Vesely’s Mesa.) Two years later, in 1959, his firm had grown into the world’s largest manufacturer of camping trailers. In 1970, the company released the first commercially produced “solid-state” pop-up camper. These traded canvas side walls for hard, plastic ones that were cranked up into place. (A Trailer Life article from 1971 referred to them as the “tent-trailer that isn’t.”) The Ramada was the most luxurious, and spacious, of the bunch. The debut version featured a three burner stove, an icebox, and a dinette table and couch that doubled as beds in 125 square feet of living space; a later version incorporated a hideaway toilet. The craftsmanship and size helped make the Ramada a mainstay for much of the next decade.
Maria Sandown purchased a honey-hued 1976 edition last year. Nicknamed “Farrah,” the hard-sided trailer had served her previous owner for four decades. (Charlie’s Angels, starring Farrah Fawcett, also debuted in the Bicentennial year.) The exterior has zero chips or cracks and minimal rust. The sink, fridge, cooktop and heater still work, and the original floral upholstery is still intact.
Photo Credit: Vesely Manufacturing Company
“I think that’s why people love them: They’re well-constructed, they’re well-engineered. They’re comfortable,” she says of the Ramada. “A lot of thought went into these campers.”
Sandown can comfortably fit her family of three plus her pack of five rescue dogs in the rig, which she decorated with new curtains and throw pillows. The way the camper collapses leaves room for storing games and bedding inside, making packing up from this troupe’s adventures much easier.
The rectangular trailer still maintains a huge following nearly four decades after Vesely went out of business; the Apache Camper Preservation Society Facebook group counts more than 13,000 members today. Sandown, who lives in Mississippi, says people constantly stop her and ask to take photos of Farrah. Many of these strangers recall camping in an Apache as a kid.
“People are so loyal to these things,” she says. “There’s a lot of nostalgia associated with it.”
This article originally appeared in Wildsam magazine. For more Wildsam content, sign up for our newsletter.
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