By the end of the 1950s, trailer parks (or mobile home parks if you prefer) were a pretty common site along the stretch of West Erie between Leavitt Road and the undercut.
Thornburg Trailer Sales was also conveniently located directly across from Robby's Mobile HomePark and Lakeview Mobile Homes Park on the south side of West Erie.
Here’s a portion of the 1959 Lorain city directory listings for West Erie Avenue. It's interesting to see addresses attached to each business, rather than the old Lake Shore Electric/bus stop numbers.
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Thornburg Trailer Sales was also conveniently located directly across from Robby's Mobile HomePark and Lakeview Mobile Homes Park on the south side of West Erie.
Here’s a portion of the 1959 Lorain city directory listings for West Erie Avenue. It's interesting to see addresses attached to each business, rather than the old Lake Shore Electric/bus stop numbers.
Note the listing of Beth-Shan Trailer Court. It was located behind the Beth-Shan Motel, which would later become Shoreway Motel.
Here's the 1960 phone book listings for "Trailer Parks." It appears that the shift to attracting permanent residents, not tourists, was well underway. New listings include Sommer's Mobile Homes Park (by the Ohio Turnpike in Elyria).
This 1960 page of the Lorain City Directory showing West Erie Avenue addresses from the Beachcomber Motor Lodge just west of Leavitt to the Lorain Drive-in Theater is kind of fun to look at. (Kolbe Road’s intersection with West Erie is indicated in the wrong place, however.)
Besides the trailer parks and businesses which I’ve highlighted in yellow, there are other things of interest, including the listing for The Palace, which sold ice cream at the same 3829 West Erie Avenue address as this building (photo courtesy of the Lorain County Auditor website).
But getting back to the trailer parks. Using the numerical addresses from the 1960 City Directory page, I’ve plotted a few of them on this current Google Map. As you can see, they were on both sides of what is today known as Anchor Lodge Retirement Village. I’m assuming that both trailer parks were eventually loss to the expansion of Anchor Lodge.
And here’s a final phone book listing for “Trailer Parks,” from the 1963 telephone book.
As longtime blog reader and contributor Rae noted in her comment last week, today there is no evidence that Robby’s Mobile Homes Park ever existed in that portion of West Erie Avenue from the West 21st Street underpass to Leavitt Road.
And with the closing of Lakeshore Mobile Home Park (along with the demolition of the Shoreway Motel and its trailer park in 2017), there are very few traces at all of the businesses that once offered overnight accommodations to weary U. S. 6 travelers.
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| The gates to the now-shuttered Lakeshore Mobile Home Park |