A Day Away: King of the Road

Courtesy of Bowlus Road Chief LLC

Glamping Time! Talk about traveling in style! Each luxurious Bowlus Road Chief travel trailer is built to order and made from materials like birch, aluminum and brass, with the body joined together by more than 5,000 hand-bucked rivets to form a single, incredibly tough “monocoque” shell. Courtesy of Bowlus Road Chief LLC.

Roger Miller sang about “trailers for sale or rent,” but if he were writing that old ditty today, “King of the Road” would surely include a chorus about the Bowlus Road Chief. Billed as “the world’s most advanced luxury travel trailer,” the Bowlus Road Chief was engineered by Hawley Bowlus in the 1930s (the same fellow who built the Spirit of St. Louis, flown by Charles Lindbergh), and the design inspired a host of aluminum competitors including Airstream, Streamline, Silver Streak, Avion and Spartan.

As for the king of them all—the Bowlus—only 80 of these glittering riveted-aluminum capsule-shaped trailers were produced before World War II shut down the camper business.

Courtesy Bowlus Road Chief LLC

Courtesy Bowlus Road Chief LLC

These beautiful silver machines are being manufactured once again right down the road in Ventura County by recent east coast transplants Geneva Long and her father John. The reimagined Bowlus Road Chief has the same sleek lines as the vintage models but with modern amenities like solar panel hook ups, heated floors, central heating, beds that convert from twins to a king, indoor/outdoor showers, Wi-Fi charging stations and a cook’s kitchen. Plus, at 24 ft. long and 2,000 lbs, the Bowlus can legally follow just about any automobile. Each model is custom-built to order: the 2015 Bowlus Road Chief runs about $110,000.

—Leslie Dinaberg

For more info, call 855/926-9587 or visit bowlusroadchief.com.

 Originally published in the Summer 2015 issue of Santa Barbara Seasons Magazine.