The great American road trip, fueled by — and undercut by — the automobile that created it

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — There's something about the American road trip.

It has been memorialized in books like Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” and satirized in movies like “National Lampoon’s Vacation."

It primarily consists of hours upon hours of driving that should be boring — but somehow isn't? Maybe it's the anticipation of getting to some mythical destination — the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Death Valley. Or maybe it's the unexpected sights along the way. Tumbleweeds! They're real!

Americans love the idea of a road trip, but we often opt for reaching our destination as quickly as possible instead. The rise of cheap airfare has made it easy to travel without the hassle of driving. When we do drive, we’re likely to stick to the interstates, blasting past the small towns we idealize at 70-plus miles per hour.

In gaining convenience, what have we lost?

In “Are We There Yet? The Golden Age of American Family Vacations,” historian Susan Rugh argues that the period after World War II was the apex of the family road trip. More Americans were rising into the middle class, many had paid vacation for the first time, car ownership was increasing rapidly, and the federal government was investing in highways that allowed for more comfortable long-distance travel.

Many veterans were eager to show their children what they had been fighting to preserve. One popular destination was Washington, D.C. Families also visited historic monuments, homes and battlefields. In the West, the nation's majestic national parks were both a tourist destination and a symbol of American democracy.

Traveling together to see America both strengthened family bonds and “provided a way to educate children as citizens,” Rugh writes.

The open road did not signal freedom for all Americans. Black families in particular often had to deal with segregated facilities, even outside of the South.

The problem was so systemic that there were guidebooks, like the well known Green Book, specifically made for Black travelers.

“The experience is totally different,” says Allen Pietrobon, a professor at Trinity University in Washington, D.C., who teaches a course on road trips. “It’s not carefree.”

The obstacles of the vacationing Black family even played a role in the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Rugh writes. The Senate Committee of Commerce heard stories like that of a Black business owner turned away from a motel in St. Petersburg, Florida, even after he offered to pay twice the normal rate. The exhausted family, including two children, had to try to sleep in the car as best they could.

“In the face of Jim Crow laws in the South and persistent racial discrimination in the rest of the nation, the cultural icon of the family vacation was offered as persuasive evidence of the need for a federal law to ensure the rights of all citizens,” Rugh writes.

It wasn’t just the national parks that needed more facilities as Americans took to the roads. Vacationers needed lodging, restaurants and service stations along the way.

Some entrepreneurs competed with one another to make their accommodations stand out from the crowd, like Wigwam Village, where the motel rooms are giant concrete teepees. Others saw the opportunity to develop roadside attractions like the world’s largest nutcracker.

“Americans are hucksters," Rugh says. “And if somebody has an attraction, somebody else is gonna serve lemonade or hamburgers right by it.”

One highway that was filled with attractions was Route 66, which turned 100 this year.

Commissioned in 1926 and fully paved by the late 1930s, the highway between Chicago and Los Angeles catered to a mid-century craze for the Old West of the 1880s. A group of business owners promoted the road, dubbing it the “Main Street of America,” but Bobby Troupe’s 1946 hit song “(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66” first recorded by Nat King Cole has had more staying power than any advertisement.

Richard Ratay calls himself the King of the Road Trip.

His book “Don't Make Me Pull Over! An Informal History of the Family Road Trip” opens with a harrowing scene of waking up as a child with the family car spinning off an icy road. The family had to wait hours in the cold before being towed out.

“Years later," he writes, “we'd all agree it was the best start to a family road trip ever.”

It’s counterintuitive, but sometimes it's the hardships and unexpected bumps in the road that make a vacation memorable.

Pietrobon recalls a coworker who got into a car accident in a tiny town in Nevada and ended up stuck for days.

“They actually ended up having a really amazing experience,” he says. “The whole purpose now of higher end travel is to eliminate any friction whatsoever. And we do lose something in that, I think.”

Before the interstates, the highway system was really just the main street of towns, connected by highways. Someone stopping for the night or even just a meal would participate in the life of that town.

″In meeting so many folks from different places, it gave families traveling by car the opportunity to realize that ... when all is said and done, we aren’t that different after all," Ratay said in an interview.

Today’s interstates mostly bypass these towns, providing chain-store gas, food and lodging right off the exit. Airplane travel elides even this minimal local interaction.

It's still possible to take the slower road, stopping to talk to locals and soaking in the experience, along with its little inconveniences.

“Get on one of those old highways anywhere,” Rugh says. “Cross the Midwest on the Lincoln Highway. Go from Arizona to Canada on Highway 89, Highway 1 in California.”

In older travel narratives, Pietrobon says, the destination is almost irrelevant. "I think about who’s going to be the next Jack Kerouac where, you know, the journey is what he’s writing about, not just the snapshots of when you stop for the day."

Part of a recurring series of stories marking the 250th anniversary of the United States. For more, click here. For a presentation of objects that have changed the nation, click here. For more stories on the anniversary, click here.

FILE - Hoodoos, also called tent rocks, fairy chimneys and earth pyramids, at Inspiration Point in Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah, on May 25, 2017. (AP Photo/Eva Parziale, File)

FILE - Bison cross a road in Yellowstone National Park, Thursday, June 13, 2024, near Mammoth Hot Springs, Wyo. (AP Photo/Matthew Brown, File)

FILE - People stand at the rim of the Grand Canyon, Monday, Aug. 31, 2026, in Grand Canyon National Park, Ariz. (AP Photo/John Locher, File)

FILE - Teepee-shaped rooms at the Wigwam Motel, a landmark along historic Route 66, in Holbrook, Ariz., on Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)

FILE - A car drives along Oatman Highway on historic Route 66, near Oatman, Ariz., on Friday, Nov. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)

California Gov. Gavin Newsom does not like being on Donald Trump's side on any issue.

But when it comes to transgender girls and women in sports, particularly at the school level, the Democrat said he largely agrees with the Republican president. Newsom, one of his party's leading White House prospects, believes it's “deeply unfair” for people who are assigned male at birth to compete against girls.

“I don’t want to be on that side of it, but I’m being honest — I’d be lying to you if I said differently,” Newsom told The Associated Press as he was campaigning recently in South Carolina. "I haven’t been able to figure out how to make it fair from my perspective.”

Newsom is not alone.

While most Democratic officials remain steadfast supporters of the transgender community, an increasing number in red and blue states are distancing themselves from their party’s unflinching support for the transgender community’s policy priorities, such as allowing athletes to compete on teams that match their gender identity. The shift follows years of conservative attacks against Democrats on the divisive issue, which affects a relatively small number of transgender people and their families, but has emerged as one of Republicans' most potent political weapons in the Trump era.

Soul searching over transgender issues is one facet of a sprawling identity crisis that Democrats are confronting during the midterms and before the next presidential election. Although they risk a backlash from their progressive base, there is also a sense in some corners that the party must evolve on an issue where the overwhelming majority of voters — even many Democrats — agree with Trump.

The issue was a central theme for Trump and his Republican allies on the main stage at their midterm convention in Dallas last week, where the president said he hoped Democrats would continue to stand up for transgender girls and women who want to compete in girls' and women's sports.

“I’m petrified that they’ll change,” he said. “That will really hurt us.”

Republicans are already replaying some of the same political attacks that they used against Kamala Harris in the presidential campaign two years ago, when they said she's “for they/them, not you.” On Friday, they released a new advertisement targeting James Talarico, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Texas, with the same phrase.

A political group backed by billionaire Trump ally Elon Musk has begun running digital ads targeting Democrats in key Senate races in Texas, Ohio and Alaska, accusing them of allowing men to compete in women’s sports.

In Texas’ pivotal Senate contest, the new ad from Musk’s America PAC opens with a video clip of Talarico saying that “God is nonbinary."

Talarico began to distance himself from those positions months ago. He went further in a Fox News interview last week, saying he would vote in favor of a national ban for gender-affirming surgeries for transgender minors, which are rare.

“I’ve missed the mark on some of my past statements. I will be the first to admit it,” Talarico said in an interview near the Republican convention site. “I think the reason that politicians in that convention center across the street want to talk about six sexes is because they don’t want to talk about $6 diesel."

In Iowa, State Auditor Rob Sand, the Democratic Party's nominee for governor, has spoken out against transgender athletes competing in women's sports as a matter of fairness. Ohio Democratic gubernatorial nominee Amy Acton has taken a similar position, although she has drawn criticism from the left for adopting Trump's language after saying she opposed “boys playing in girls’ sports."

And in deep-blue Massachusetts, transgender rights became a defining campaign issue during the state's recent Democratic U.S. Senate primary, illustrating the potential backlash that party members can face.

Sen. Ed Markey, 80, secured the nomination and later credited his win to not shying away from advocating for transgender rights. He used the issue to attack his Democratic opponent, Rep. Seth Moulton, who had said he wouldn't want his daughters to play against transgender athletes.

Moulton apologized for his comments, which drew outrage from some progressives, but the damage was done.

While Moulton lost his primary, his position — not Markey's — is in line with the majority of voters nationally.

A June poll from Quinnipiac University found that about 7 in 10 registered voters think that transgender women and girls should not be allowed to play on women’s and girls' sports teams. About one-quarter think they should. Democrats are divided, with about half saying transgender women and girls should be allowed and about half saying they should not.

A Pew Research Center poll conducted last year found that just over half, 55%, of Democrats would be “not too” or “not at all” comfortable with athletes playing on teams that don’t match their sex at birth, while 21% said they were “somewhat” comfortable and only 23% said they were “extremely” or “very” comfortable with this.

Markey’s public commitment to transgender rights stood out because Democratic politicians are increasingly running away from the issue, said Tyler Hack, executive director of the Christopher Street Project, which is dedicated to electing supporters of transgender rights to federal office.

“The reality of being a transgender person in America in 2026 is that on election nights, while other folks are talking about who had a good night and who had a bad night, sometimes you are quietly wondering, ‘Am I going to be OK?’” Hack said.

At the same time, even transgender activists are divided over supporting Democrats who have positions that are unfriendly to transgender people.

Erin Reed, an advocate and independent journalist covering transgender issues, this month put out a guide flagging Democratic candidates who she accused of taking anti-transgender positions. She highlighted 15 states that have such Democrats, saying that she would not vote for the “worst offenders” even if it means a Republican wins.

She doesn’t want Democrats to see that “throwing transgender people under the bus is a winning strategy.”

“One seat can be won back,” Reed wrote. “A party cannot.”

Meanwhile, Hack would probably vote for a Democrat even if that candidate supports some policies the Christopher Street Project opposes, in hopes that the party can take control of Congress. However, those candidates shouldn't expect the organization's endorsement.

“While I hope many of them win, I think they can do it without our resources and without our support," Hack said.

The political debate is evolving as transgender people increasingly become the target of conservative backlash through state laws and the Trump administration.

Sports participation has become one of the main fronts in a political battle over transgender rights, although most Republican-controlled states have also implemented policies that affect a bigger slice of the population. There are bans on some gender-affirming health care for transgender young people and rules barring transgender people from using the bathrooms that match their gender identity in schools and occasionally other public places.

At least 25 states are now enforcing laws or policies banning transgender women and girls from competing in at least some women’s and girls' sports and three others have adopted laws but have enforcement blocked by the courts.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld state laws barring transgender girls from school teams.

Transgender athletes make up a small portion of team rosters. NCAA president Charlie Baker testified in 2024 that he knew of fewer than 10 transgender college student-athletes out of more than 500,000 total.

The debate within the Democratic Party heading into the 2026 midterms offers a preview for those Democrats contemplating presidential bids in 2028.

Newsom, who is considered a frontrunner in the shadow primary, highlighted his long record of supporting LGBTQ+ priorities, including sanctioning same-sex marriage as the San Francisco mayor decades ago and later appointing the first trans judge in California history.

But in sports, he thinks it's unfair to allow people assigned as males at birth to compete against girls.

“It’s a hard issue. I struggle with it,” Newsom said. “I think people know where my heart is, my soul is. I have a trans godson.”

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, another likely Democratic presidential contender, has taken the opposite position.

He has consistently criticized state-level bans and restrictions on transgender athletes, calling them “bullying” and a “setback for equality.” Following the recent Supreme Court ruling that upheld state bans on transgender athletes, Pritzker, whose cousin is transgender, reaffirmed his position on social media.

“There’s a place for you in Illinois,” he wrote.

In Pennsylvania, Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro opposes bans on transgender athletes in school sports, which he's called cruel and designed to discriminate. He argues that athletic participation and eligibility should not be dictated by politicians, but rather handled by local athletic organizations — a stance in line with several LGBTQ+ groups.

He's also raised questions of fairness, however.

“Look, I think it’s a tough deal being born into the wrong body. And I don’t think these kids deserve to be persecuted and bullied by the president of the United States," Shapiro told The Atlantic last year. "I also don’t think they deserve an unfair advantage on the playing field.” Research has been mixed on whether transgender women have advantages in sports, and it depends partly on whether they went through puberty as boys.

Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who is gay and a potential presidential contender, said on Fox earlier in the year that he takes people seriously on both sides of the debate “whether you’re talking about parents who are wondering what this means for fairness for their kids competing, or parents who want to make sure that their kids aren’t being discriminated against and get a chance to participate.”

Associated Press writers Kimberlee Kruesi in Providence, Rhode Island, and Amelia Thomson DeVeaux in Washington contributed.

FILE - People hold signs and point after comments on transgender athletes made by Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham, before a WNBA basketball game between the Minnesota Lynx and Indiana Fever, Aug. 2, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr, File)

FILE - Demonstrators rally in support of transgender athletes in women's sports outside of Barclay's Center before the WNBA basketball game between the Indiana Fever and the New York Liberty, Aug. 22, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Angelina Katsanis, File)

FILE - Fans wear shirts saying, "Trans Kids Belong In Sports," during a WNBA basketball game between the Minnesota Lynx and the Indiana Fever, Aug. 2, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)

FILE - A woman holds a sign supporting trans people during a rally before a WNBA basketball game between the Portland Fire and the Indiana Fever in Portland, Ore., July 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Craig Mitchelldyer, File)

FILE - Iowa Democratic gubernatorial candidate Rob Sand speaks during a campaign rally, June 7, 2026, in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall, File)

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Texas state Rep. James Talarico speaks during a television interview at a food drive at the Frederick Douglass Human Services and Justice Center, Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2026, in Dallas. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks at a rally for democratic candidates Saturday, Sept. 5, 2026, in Monroe, N.C. (AP Photo/Nell Redmond)