The forgotten art of hitchhiking — and why it disappeared

In 1950, Pete Koltnow had just graduated from college and needed to get from New York to Yuma, Arizona, where he was due to start a new job. He had no car, so he hitchhiked nearly 2,500 miles, flagging ride after ride from total strangers.

“Back to bumpy seats and the open road,” he wrote to his girlfriend Dot Witter from Villa Ridge, Missouri. “Trucks are kindest to me.”

Koltnow ultimately got to Yuma in a few days. Years later, the series of postcards he sent to Witter became part of a Smithsonian exhibition on transportation history. But that’s not because his trip was at all unusual — it’s because the postcards are a remarkably detailed record of a once-routine transportation mode that has essentially vanished… read more >