Elkhart Audioguides

Elkhart has a legitimate claim to one of the more unusual industrial titles in America: the RV Capital of the World. More than 80 percent of all recreational vehicles produced globally are manufactured in the Elkhart County area, a concentration of the industry that grew from a single trailer built in 1931 by a local businessman named Milo Miller who needed a way to take his family on his business trips. When his neighbours saw the trailer, they wanted one too, and within a decade the whole town had caught the idea. By the late 1940s, national press was calling Elkhart the Trailer Capital of the World, and the supply chain of axles, appliances, fabrics, and plumbing that feeds the factories has kept the industry rooted here ever since.

Elkhart sits where the Elkhart River meets the St.

Joseph River in northern Indiana, and the city name comes from an island in the river that was thought to resemble an elk's heart. The city has a small historic downtown and is home to the RV/MH Hall of Fame and Museum on the east side of town, which tells the surprisingly compelling history of the American road trip from horse-drawn wagons through the golden age of the motor home. The Miles Christi oratory and the Ruthmere mansion, a Beaux-Arts house built in 1910 by a local businessman, give a sense of Elkhart's more genteel past.