Airstream Heritage Center – A Century Worth of Luxury Travel-Trailers

The Airstream Heritage Center will celebrate 91 years of vintage trailers and worldwide road trips, with a slew of iconic “silver-bullet” trailers on display, as well as a series of exhibits that will focus on the brand's cultural relevance through the years.

The museum is in Jackson Center, Ohio, the same campus where the company’s state-of-the-art manufacturing plant is located, and will open to the public on June 1.

The riveted aluminum-shell campers that pioneer manufacturer Wally Byam started building in the 1930s are arguably the most recognizable travel trailers in America. These innovative travel trailers turn heads on the road and inspire adventure wherever you’re headed.

Inside the Heritage Center museum, visitors will be able to admire one-of-a-kind vintage Airstream travel trailers, as well as a collection of memorabilia, including original films and photos that illustrate the brand’s history. Even Airstream owners contributed to the current exhibition, as some of the items on display have been donated or borrowed from Airstream loyal fans.

According to the company, the Heritage Center museum will welcome visitors with a “time capsule” through an immersive experience that will pay homage to the brand’s century-old history, its products, artifacts and the customers who helped shape Airstream’s past “and continue [to] inspire its future.”

“People who have vintage collections of very rare trailers are already stepping up to lend us their trailers to show the world or come here for events so that we can extend the museum experience out to the parking lot,” said Mollie Hansen, Airstream’s chief marketing officer.

And indeed, just by looking at the photos, you can tell that Airstream's history serves as great inspiration for the company’s current charm, with its new travel-trailer models taking cues from original campers dating as early as 1938.

Besides the exhibits, fans of the brand can also enjoy a walking tour of the Airstream assembly line. The tour, which must be booked in advance, will offer some insight into how Airstream products are built.

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Airstream is known for having a close-knit relationship with its customers and always listening to their feedback. Actually, this is how they came up with the Flying Cloud Office, a 30-foot trailer model unveiled last year that comes with a dedicated office space, carefully delimitated from the rest of the trailer. To build it, Airstream engineers relied on input and perspective from customers via social media, dealers, face-to-face private encounters.

The company says that it always wanted to have their headquarters and a venue dedicated to Airstream enthusiasts in the same place, so the Heritage Center museum being located next to their manufacturing facility in Jackson Center, Ohio, is a dream come true. The company had been hosting tours of its previous facility for about 10,000 visitors annually, but with the Heritage Center now opening to the public, it expects that number to double.

“We know our customers will make a pilgrimage to come here. There were so many people who wanted to come here and see it we had to do a lottery because we can only hold so many,” Hassen explained.

Airstream didn’t want the museum’s grand opening to go unnoticed, so it decided to host a three-day rally to mark the event. The rally is set to start today, May 27, and will include about 80 silver-bullet trailers ranging from rare vintage models to modern-era Airstreams. They will all be showcased in the parking lot of the Heritage Center.