RV/MH Hall of Fame

Have you ever walked into a museum with motorized vehicles then sat down in the driver seat? Not too often I think. Outside the museum was a WW II vets trailer he bought when he came out of the service, then he traveled and lived in it ever since. A sign outside the trailer told his story. Just in case I didn’t believe it, I noticed the man’s checkbook in a drawer inside. The interior wood was worn but gorgeous.
Mae West’s travel coach has an open rear porch. There were a few one of a kind builds and some were roped off, but many are not. If you like visiting yester-​year or the show «Tiny homes» then you should come see this place. The place is chock full of Tiny Homes on wheels and some you could start and drive away, with one or two for sale even.

One of the coolest museums ever. They showed almost every style of RV possible-​via photo or actual RV. I learned so much coming to this museum. The tickets were $ 12 I believe, $ 8 for seniors. They included a $ 90k 700sf manufactured model home, gift shop, video about RVs in general, a few new RV models from this year with slide outs. Then they have another room with 20 – 30 RVs that span the decades. They even had MaeWest’s camper. Other highlights included a Cadillac model, a cougar, and some teardrops. I’m so glad we went-​it was well worth it to make a stop to the RV capital of the world!!!

Arrived wanting a T@b trailer, left ready to spend 5x more on a fifth wheel and a King Ranch to pull it. The first trailer in the tour had our names written all over it!
The tour of the historic vehicles was fun but both my wife and I get a little bit of the heebie-​jeebies over old stuff so we didn’t elect to go into most of them.
Fun little diversion on the way to the beach from Ohio.

This place was great. The new RVs you get to walk through are brand new — they had inspection tags from about a month ago — and they have a mini factory tour.
But the best part, as noted, is the GIANT hall full of RVs from the last century, from the first handmade Model A buildouts through the retro Airstreams of the height of highway travel to modern campers. The historic campers have been restored and some of them have photographs and recreated camp scenes to show you what it was like to camp throughout the decades. They even have some famous campers, like Mae West’s 5-​star, custom built RV.
It’s totally worth the historical and kitsch value. You can walk inside so many of the restored campers. It’s definitely worth the stop.

I grew up camping and didn’t know about Indiana being the RV Capitol until I got older and then eventually moved to the area. I thought it was pretty cool to see all the vintage trailers. My parents and other family members were in a camping club when I was a child. It was cooing going down memory lane to see the model trailer my parents once owned and so forth. I thought it was a cool way to spend an afternoon. The place was pretty dead though and not sure how often people go in there.

This was one of the stops on the heritage trail, we decided why not? The staff was very friend and the place was very clean and nice but It really was not worth $ 8 a person. I would have rather saved my money and spent it else where.

Have you ever (as I have) wanted to walk among dinosaurs? Hold out a handful of peanuts for them to eat? Pet their rough flanks? Set out a bowl of water for them to drink?
Well, dinosaurs still walk (or, in this case, roll) the earth, and beautifully maintained and restored examples of them can be seen here at the RV Hall of Fame and Museum. Take a few minutes to check-​out the brand new RVs on display, but save most of your time for the collection of upwards of 100 lovingly-​restored trailers and motor homes, spanning 8 decades, on exhibit in two expansive exhibition halls. Americans have been in love with roadtripping, car camping and RVing since the earliest days of the automobile, it seems, and the evidence is right here.
There’s a smartly-​designed fold-​out camper pod designed to be placed atop a 1916 Model-​T Ford pick-​up truck; several different homemade 1920s-​era RVs modified from stock truck models by their ingenious and handy owners; streamlined moderne examples from the 30s; Mae West’s personal, chauffeured RV which launched the movie star trailer concept; postwar-​living-​the-​good-​life trailers with maple wood paneling and Scandinavian Modern accents; 1970s vans transformed into groovy, rolling love mobiles, and more. There’s even a scale model trailer assembly line showing every step of the manufacturing process.
As America became richer in the mid and later decades of the 20^th century, these vehicles became bigger, more outrageous, more ungainly. With gas prices inevitably climbing, It’s hard to imagine a bright future for vehicles that only get 8 MPH. I just wish the industry would return to those practical, space-​efficient models of the early ‘50s (updated with today’s materials and technologies, of course). Those are sweet.