The Age of the Roadside Wigwam

As you drive, keep an eye out for the old survivors of this road's golden age — because once the Mohawk Trail opened, a whole world of roadside Americana sprang up along it. This was the birth of the great American road trip, the nineteen-twenties and thirties, when families in their new automobiles came rolling up here by the thousands, and the little mountain towns figured out fast that those travelers wanted somewhere to stop, stretch, buy a postcard, and gawk at the view.

So up went the gift shops and the lookout towers and the tourist cabins, and — this being the Mohawk Trail — a lot of them leaned hard on the Indian theme. Trading posts with big fake teepees out front, totem poles that never had a thing to do with New England, a giant carved Indian towering over one shop's parking lot. It was kitsch, and some of it traded on a cartoon version of the very people whose real trail this was — worth remembering as you smile at it.

But a few of these places were the genuine article, run by Native families selling real craft, and a handful of the old shops and summit houses are still standing and still open, a century on. When you spot one, it's a little time capsule from the dawn of car-tourism in America. This road practically invented the scenic drive as a thing you do for fun — and you're doing it right now.