Airstream FounderWally Byam

The Life of Wally Byam

Wally's Childhood

Wally Byam was born July 4, 1896, in Baker City, Oregon. At that time, Baker City was a boom town along the Oregon Trail, which his grandparents had traveled along on their journey out west in a mule-drawn wagon.  

Wally was named after his mother Carrie Biswell Byam’s brother Wallace, who died just before Wally’s birth. Wally was only three years old when his father, Dr. Willis Bertram “Bert” Byam, and mother divorced. Bert moved away, and Carrie married a butcher named David T. Davis. 

Wally developed his wanderlust in Oregon, where he spent his childhood surrounded by water, forests, and hills to climb. He worked as a crew member on a sailing fleet, which only encouraged his thirst for travel. Wally also worked with his uncle Roger on a sheep farm in the mountains, where he lived in a wooden wagon towed by a donkey – much like his grandparents before him. Inside the wagon he had a stove, food, water, and everything he needed, which would later inspire his first travel trailer.  

When he was 20 years old, Wally’s stepfather was killed in a cattle accident. A few months later, his mother passed away from a heart condition. Wally was on his own. His always-high grades got him into Stanford University, and he worked several jobs to pay his way, graduating with honors in 1921.

Building the First Airstream

After graduating college, Wally used his experience on the Stanford school newspaper to earn him several jobs in advertising and journalism in Los Angeles. On the side, Wally became a publisher, and by the late 1920s, he owned seven magazines. Around that same time, Wally met and married his first wife Marion James. Together they went camping regularly, but Marion never loved sleeping on the ground in a tent.  

In the early 1920s, Wally decided to build a travel trailer (not unlike the wagon he lived in as a child on the farm), but one Marion would actually enjoy camping in. He started with a Model T chassis with a tent contraption on top. But it was tedious to put together onsite, and it didn’t provide protection from the elements. So he took that same platform and built on it a tear-drop shaped structure with sleeping space, a stove, and an ice chest. Wally and Marion took the trailer on a camping trip and loved it as much as their fellow travelers did – along with their neighbors when they got home.  

Wally published a DIY guide on how to build the trailer, and advertised in magazines like Popular Mechanics. Soon, several of his neighbors commissioned him to build trailers for them. By 1929, his Torpedo Car Cruiser was attracting a lot of attention, and eventually demand was enough that Wally opened a small trailer factory in California to build what he called “Airstreams,” after the way they moved “like a stream of air” down the road. 

A boom of more than 450 travel trailer companies exploded in the 1930s, but by the end of the decade, only Airstream would remain. In the early 1930s, Wally designed most of his trailers with a wood composite called Masonite. His Silver Cloud trailers were gorgeous and streamlined, with elegant interior wood paneling and the comforts of home he would later promise. But they were a far cry from the riveted aluminum Airstream trailers we love today.

1936: The First Riveted Travel Trailer

In 1936, the Clipper was a revelation, with sleek curves and a streamlined look. There were other riveted metal trailers at the time, but Wally believed he could build a better mousetrap. His design incorporated a main entry door on the side of the trailer and every iteration improved the design exponentially, with larger rain gutters over the windows, stronger bumpers, longer trailer lengths, and increasingly complex interior floor plans. From 1936 to 1941, Wally built approximately 45 Clippers and sold them to Hollywood elites, international dignitaries, and travelers who desired not just the comforts of home, but the luxuries to boot.

America Enters World War II

Business boomed until America entered World War II with the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Aluminum was classified as a wartime material, and Wally closed the factory. During the war, Wally worked several jobs in the aviation industry, including as a certified manufacturing engineer and production supervisor at Curtis Wright Industries. When the war ended in 1945, Wally persuaded the management at Curtis Wright to let him design and manufacture a line of travel trailers. 

Wally eventually parted ways with Curtis Wright and re-opened Airstream in 1947, with his eyes planted as firmly as ever on creating the ultimate vehicles for adventure. And in those difficult post-war years, it was Wally’s spirit that inspired employees to work harder than ever, even digging into their own pockets to pay for refrigerators and other parts to be installed in order to get a trailer out the door and sold. Always the creative marketer, Wally garnered interest in the new Airstream line by inviting the famous French cyclist Alfred Letourneur to visit the factory and tow a trailer with a bike to demonstrate its lightweight nature. The picture became the famous Airstream logo.

Leading the Company – and the Caravans

Wally placed a “way of life” at the top of the list of the things Airstream “sold,” and that wasn’t just a marketing ploy; he lived and breathed it. In 1951, Wally and a group of adventurers formed the first Airstream Caravan. Their trip through Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua was rugged to say the least, touring some of the most remote terrain in Central America. Wally was exhausted, yet invigorated by the spirit of the Caravanners. Over the years, he and his second wife Stella would lead many more Caravans through Europe, Canada, and across the continent of Africa.

The Capetown to Cairo Caravan (1959-1960) was Wally's most ambitious Caravan yet. Forty-one Airstreams were loaded onto a shipping vessel and unloaded in South Africa. They traversed the length of the continent and along the way they met with tribes in what is today the Democratic Republic of Congo, met with Emperor Haile Selassie in Ethiopia, floated the trailers down the Nile River, and camped at the base of the Pyramids. The journey was done without the use of GPS, email, or cell phones – forward scouts hammered signs with arrows into the ground to let the Caravanners know which way to go. It was a journey unlike any other, and cemented Wally's intrepid spirit in the minds of Airstreamers for decades to come.

On each journey, Wally searched for new ideas on how to improve his travel trailers, constantly reporting back to headquarters with instructions to improve his products.

Continuing Wally’s Legacy 

By the early 1950s, Airstream had outgrown its Los Angeles plant and desperately needed to expand. Rather than staying on the West Coast, Wally began to search for a suitable site to establish an eastern production facility and distribution point. In 1952, Wally and his friend, Cornelius "Neil" Vanderbilt III, traveled to Chicago to show off his Airstreams at that year's political conventions. Afterward, the pair traveled down through the Midwest and met up with a relative near Sidney, Ohio. There, he learned about a defunct bazooka factory in Jackson Center, Ohio. He purchased the property, and soon Airstream was manufacturing both in California and in Ohio.

Wally led Airstream as president until 1955, when he suffered a heart attack and began to prepare for retirement. In 1957, he handed the company over to Andy Charles in Ohio and Art Costello in California. He was still very involved in the business, inspiring people with his trademark fighting spirit. 

Wally passed away in 1962 in his sleep at his California home after battling cancer. Soon after, the two divisions of the company (east and west) merged to become one, and the company was run by Art Costello until his retirement in 1971. Andy Charles became the Chairman of the Board, and through his relationship with the Airstream Club International, brought Wally's dream of an Around the World Caravan to life in 1963-1964.

Today, Bob Wheeler is the company’s 8th President and CEO, and continues to lead the company with Wally in mind.

Wally’s Creed 

Sometime in the late 1950s, Wally commemorated his personal philosophy in a document that continues to guide Airstream today. A poetic statement on the power of travel to open minds, expand horizons, and make our dreams come true, Wally's Creed is a guiding light for Airstream as a company, and one that inspires modern Airstreamers to this day.

In the heart of these words is an entire life’s dream. To those of you who find in the promise of these words your promise, I bequeath this creed…my dream belongs to you.” 

To place the great wide world at your doorstep for you who yearn to travel with all the comforts of home. 

To provide a more satisfying, meaningful way of travel that offers complete travel independence, wherever and whenever you choose to go or stay. 

To keep alive and make real an enduring promise of high adventure and faraway lands…of rediscovering old places and new interests. 

To open a whole world of new experiences…a new dimension in enjoyment where travel adventure and good fellowship are your constant companions.  

To encourage clubs and rallies that provide an endless source of friendships, travel fun and personal expressions. 

To lead caravans wherever the four winds blow…over twinkling boulevards, across trackless deserts…to the traveled and untraveled corners of the earth. 

To play some part in promoting international goodwill and understanding among the peoples of the world through person-to-person contact. 

To refine and perfect our product by continuous travel-testing over the highways and byways of the world. 

To strive endlessly to stir the venturesome spirit that moves you to follow a rainbow to its end…and thus make your travel dreams come true.