Circle City Van Club History

Celebrating Our 34thYear!

Camping in groups is nothing new.  People have been doing it for years as the picture below shows.

Old trucks were converted to campers very early in the auto industries history.  One of these such vehicles looked like this.

In the late '60's and early '70's this camping thing took off in a flurry with the arrival of the custom van.  These vans came from factories, customizers, and innovative individuals.   These are just a few  of the early conversion vans.

 
 
 

Many of these individuals soon became organized into Van Clubs.  Van clubs began to pop up all over the world.

Circle City Van Club or CCVC, as it is sometimes called, was started back in 1973.  A few van owners who loved their vans and camping organized and formed the club. None of the founding members are left.  The club membership, boasting over 35 members at one time, is now down to just a few.  However, those of us that are left are full of the vanning spirit. 

These are some examples of our original jacket patch,  hat iron on transfer, and club license plate.  We're still running the club license plate on the front of our vans since Indiana doesn't require 2 regular license plates.

   

Our jackets are blue jean of any style with the club patch centered on the back. Then they are usually loaded to the max with patches and pins from eVANts we have attended. Almost every eVANt that van clubs put on sell patches, dash plaques, and sometimes pins. Many of us collect one of these or more. 

 

In 1987 we redesigned our logo and came up with a new look.  We decided to incorporate Monument Circle from our state capital into our design.  Our new jacket patch and hat patch is represented on our home page as well as below.

   
Jacket Patch   Hat Patch   30 Year Patch

We get together during the summer mostly at the truck-ins for our meetings and such. During the off-season months (when it's just to down right too cold to be outside) we either gather at each other's houses or maybe a Dairy Queen. Meetings are usually to discuss up coming eVANts or activities that the club wants to be involved with.  One of these is the Institution truck-in put on by the Hoosier Van Congress in September in Indiana.  You might like to come visit us.  This is a great truck-in.

Circle City has hosted many events in the past 30 years. They have included:

  • Truck-in's
  • Volleyball & Beer Bashes
  • Mall Show-N-Shines some inside and out.
  • Charity Shows
  • Hall Parties

Our club has won many awards over the last 30 years.  We've won awards for tug-of-war, van pulls, show-n-shines, many wild club participation awards, and numerous costume awards.  Circle City has even had it's picture in a magazine called  TRUCKIN'.   We were in the April 1988 addition and it was taken at a Mid West International truck-in held in Angola, IN.  The theme of the truck-in was OZ. Most of the club attended that year. We had made a yellow brick road costume out of yellow sheets with black lines (made them look like bricks).  It was great!   We even had our kids dressed as Dorothy, the Tin Man, etc. along with a dog in the club that looked like Toto and of course the witch!  The costumes have become a tradition at most of the events we attend.  These are some pictures of the Costume Contests at Bluegrass Vanners truck-ins.  In the last several years we have won the best Club Costume Contest over and over again.  Our members have also won many of the individual Costume Contest nearly ever year.  We have been Judges, convicts, hobos, hippies, Trekies (from Star Trek), Egyptians, Cave people and lots of other things.

 
 

One thing nice about being a vanner or a van club member is your brotherhood of friends.  There are clubs in many different countries around the world.  The feeling of closeness seems to be the same no matter how far you travel or what country you travel in.