Young Swedish Blonde Girl Wearing Necklace At The Old Travel Trailer

In Europe, the origins of travel trailers and caravanning can be traced back to traveling Romani people ('Gypsies'), and showmen who spent most of their lives in horse drawn trailers. The world's first leisure trailer was built by the Bristol Carriage Company in 1880 for Dr. W. Gordon-Stables. It was an 18-foot (5.5 m) design, based upon their Bible Wagons, which Gordon-Stables named "Wanderer". One of the first home-built house trailers in America was built by John "Jack" Anthony Porcella, grocer-barber-restaurateur-miner who travelled extensively throughout the western states. Modern travel trailers come in a range of sizes, from tiny two-berth trailers with no toilet and only basic kitchen facilities, to large, triple-axle, six-berth types.
• Gypsy caravans
Caravans have served both as a significant cultural icon and symbol of the nomadic Gypsy people. Until the early 19th century, Gypsy caravans served primarily as a means of transportation and not as a domicile. At the beginning of the 19th century, more Gypsy people began to live in their caravans instead of sleeping in tents. The caravan offered greater protection from weather conditions and could be outfitted with modern amenities such as wood burning stoves. Often, caravans were commissioned to be built at the request of newlywed couples and their families. The small-scale, pre-industrial methods of the builders and the labor-intensive nature of the building process meant that a family's caravan could take up to a year to build.