ON WISCONSIN | THERESA THERESA — The trip is almost too much to comprehend. These days we're pampered with spacious SUVs, rooftop storage cases to store the stuff we can't fit in the back, video screens for the kids and satellite radio for the grown-ups. And our roads? They're interstates with speed limits in some states topping out at 80 mph and dotted with hotels with complimentary breakfasts and swimming pools, along with convenience stores and travel plazas overflowing with slices of pizza, chicken tenders, beef jerky and 48-ounce cups of soda.
That wasn't the case in the late 1920s for those heading to Yellowstone National Park. But there were some quaint accommodations and a road designed to get travelers there as quickly as possible. That's why Jim Rodell recently drove his 1925 Ford Model T from Hartford and parked it next to a small cabin in this village's downtown, just a few blocks from Widmer's Cheese Cellar.
He was helping re-create a scene that played out all along the Yellowstone Trail, a 3,600-mile roadway from Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts to Puget Sound in Washington but with a 54-mile spur in Montana that took travelers south from Livingston to Gardiner at the park's north entrance. A refuge for 'autotourists' Theresa, in Dodge County, 21 miles straight south of Fond du Lac, is one of many communities along the Yellowstone Trail, and, from the late 1920s to early 1950s, it was home to four cabins built for "autotourists," many of them headed west to the .