California hitchhikers of the 70s

So Doug Biggert liked rough trade?

Half of those people - hell no. Several looked like trouble. A few looked like male hustlers.

My ex (older than me) said he used to hitchhike to high school in the 70s. Hitchhikers were common as I recall.

And that VW bug was a rusted out piece of shit - I wouldn't have got into that car!

California was wild in the 1970s.

There were multiple serial killers named the Freeway Killer operating at the same time yet people were still hitchiking up and down the state.

Yeah. I expected that story to conclude with that none of those photographed were never seen alive again.

[quote]none of those photographed were never seen alive again.

Oh dear, r3.

Uhhh...

No.

R2 - people hitchhiked all over the US in the 1970s - not just California.

This brings back memories for me. I started hitchhiking pretty young, around 13 or 14. I was so into it that in my late teens and twenties the desire to hitchhike almost cast a spell on me. I continued hitching into my thirties, but gradually less so.

I miss much of how the world was at that time. Not all. But much.

R8 - I think you dodged a bullet with Doug Biggert's run down rust-trap VW bug. AM only. No AC.

But yeah - I feel like innocence and a type of life and mentality was lost in the 80s. Then it became $$$, consumerism, people hating other groups, battles between Dems and Republicans.

Not that everything in the 70s was great and everyone was cool - but it feels like it.

The one dude who looks like he shat his pants from the FRONT ...

I hitchhiked around the country in the late 80s and Northern California, Oregon and Washington were the easiest areas to get rides. Some of the 60s 70s culture was still around.

How many of them were uncut? Hmmmm???

Not many, R12, after they crossed paths with me.

The guy with the sweet-looking yellow dog could be John Cazale's brother.

Ha, that dude @R5 is DEFINITELY tripping. Hard.

Teenage Julie Thurston has no wheels, so she hitchhikes to get around. Unfortunately, a psychopath is roaming the highways, picking up young girls and raping them.

I think the person with the soiled pants MIGHT be a woman in very shapeless clothes. Half of the people look as though they escaped from a mental institution. The skinny boy with the leather vest - definitely gay, maybe trying to hitchhike to SF to try to meet a sugar daddy. My older siblings all hitchhiked, but it scared the living' bejeesus out of me. My dad would pick up hitchhikers in Montana, but there, the odds of picking up an ax murdered were somewhat lower.

To be fair - he was driving a rusty beat-up VW bug. So the people willing to go in his car may have thrown off the averages.

California in the 1970s…❤️😎👌🤘✌🏼🧔‍♀️🌴🌝🌈

I love these old slices of Americana. For you white Elders, life just seemed more bliss and less chaotic.

I remember this America as a child. Gritty but still better than today. The majority servile chubby comfort critters of today are pathetic.

I can't believe I hitched as much as I did back in the NE in the late 70s.

Great memories.

Now I can't leave the house without a cell phone.

Same here, R22. All over New England and New York in the 1970s and lived to tell the tale.

So strange to think that hitchhiking was so common. If a young woman were hitchhiking on the side of the road today people would be terrified for her safety and calling the cops.

I remember hitching around England as a college student with a friend. A rich couple picked us up, served us lunch and said they were sorry they were too busy to take us to Calais in their yacht. They were totally harmless and just nice. Those were the days.

Ass, grass or gas

I would not want to ride in that car.

Sounds like a great update to fuck, marry, kill r26!

Don't they really arrest parents now for letting their kids walk up the street in the daytime? Times have really changed.

oh, honey.

Creepy. “From the files of William Bonin “

As a teenager who hitchhiked AND went home with guys I met at cruising spots, it is truly a miracle I survived those years.

R32 - or the media overplayed the risks for ratings.

Not saying there wasn't potential danger, but there were a lot of things overplayed in the 70s and 80s. Remember about all the razors and poison in Halloween candy that was never found? I remember getting our Halloween candy x-rayed - seriously.

As I recall, the more positive experiences you had hitchhiking, the more you wanted to do it.

My gay curiosity must have been part of it. I remember once being picked up by a middle aged man who was signaling he wanted some action...but he didn't push it. I remember being dropped off at a rest stop in CT, at what must have been a major gay cruising area, but I didn't have a clue such places existed.....I put it together later.

That first pic looks like a child.

I remember seeing hitchhikers a lot as a kid but they are all gone now.

Scrolling through the pics, most of them were children, R35.

I thought I was too young to hitchhike, but seeing these pictures... My brother and sister both hitchhiked to our parents' great displeasure. It was mostly media hysteria; I seem to recall there being an effort by TPTB to overplay the danger. But all it took to end the culture of children playing outside in the afternoon was one well-publicized abduction and the entire country went into lockdown (before we knew what a lockdown looked like).

I've only ever picked up two hitchhikers, both more than 25 years ago and oddly enough both were doctors. One was just a guy who did not want to talk; the other I picked up on my way home from college, we got to chatting and he recognized me saying, "Don't you work at..." and a few days later he came in to the store, saw me and came over to give me a couple dollars to pay for the gas, explaining that he was only hitchhiking because he had lost his wallet and keys. I refused saying I hadn't gone an inch out of the way, just pay it forward and give another doctor a ride sometime.

I don't think I'd pick up a hitchhiker today.

In 1978, when I was twenty-one, my friend and I hitched from Traverse City, Mi to southern South America. We then flew from Rio to Miami and hitched back up to TC from there. I left with four hundred dollars in my pocket (my friend had more but not much more). My dad dropped us off on I-75 and we returned four months later. We had some scary moments. I was assumed to be a whore by most men (I am female) and was routinely pawed and very nearly raped on one occasion but I lived to tell the tale. The next year, I hitched throughout Europe.

[quoteJ I remember seeing hitchhikers a lot as a kid but they are all gone now.

Did they really have their belongings tied up in a rag hanging from a stick over their shoulder way back then?

That was hobos, R39

They went by train.

R40- Do think they were HOBOSEXUAL?

To R5-look at his face-The BEAR cums to mind!!

Great timepiece photos thanks for posting. As a youth I hitchhiked all over California without any incident. Even now I often pick up folks totally based on intuition. Only once did I ever get worried about who I had invited into my car.. I picked up a guy with Torretts syndrome. He was trying hard to be congenial but uttered all the things one would be afraid of to hear from a hitchhiker. I recognized that he had a syndrome though and soldiered through. That was a weird experience. I have been picked up myself by the most unlikely folks possible. You would be amazed at the people that would pick up a middle aged guy even now. A lot of people just really need someone to talk to.

As someone who has spent decades researching murdered and missing persons I can assure you that hitchhiking is extremely dangerous.

A.I.

r43 Are you in America? And still hitchhiking.... for fun?

The 70s was the end of the era for hitchhiking and I really enjoyed it. I only had one problematic experience and was able to get out of it easily. I got rides from a wide cross-section of people and it was fun to meet and talk with people whose life experiences were different from mine. I was a typical long haired college student but probably looked more like someone’s neighbor than anyone who posed a threat. I rarely had to wait long and I was willing to pick up hitchhikers once I had a car.

Having a car stopped me from hitching, but what stopped me from picking up hitchers? Seeing walk always from a psych hospital where I worked thumbing for rides not far from the hospital. That would have been around 1981 and it coincided when hitchhiking became much less common. The beginning of the Reagan years made a lot of things seem less carefree.

R26 what was your primary mode of currency. Something tells me you were a beautiful whore.

R5 is a female without the benefit of a tampon. Im sure the smell was just wonderful...

R38, that’s insane - hitchhiking from Michigan to Rio? At 21? And a girl, no less. I honestly can’t wrap my head around it. If you’re game, I think DL would love to hear more.

Colleen Stan was hitchhiking in 1977 to a party in CA and was picked up by a couple who held her captive in a box under a bed for seven years.

It was NOT safe.

Sharon Baldeagle and her friend were picked up by serial killer Royal Russell Long. The friend escaped but Sharon had never been found.

Jim Mattis - former 4-star Marine General and SecDef - hitchhiked through the West from age 13! to 16. He talks about some beat downs and sleeping in jails. His parents were caring and attentive but must have had a very generous 'hippie' attitude.. I have no idea how he was able to do this and survive.

Look how skinny everyone is! And how tight the pants are. Damn, those were the days.

I am the gal who hitchhiked to South America. Just prior to leaving, there was a nationally-notorious case where a hitchhiker in California, I believe, had her arms cut off by a psycho who picked her up. My best pal was convinced that I would return home armless, if at all. However, hitchhiking actually sort of gave me faith in the vast majority of humanity. We were taken in, fed, and treated as honored guests by so many people, rich and poor. While I did have to deal with being molested on a regular basis, that was just the deal at the time in Latin America. Even kindly grandfather-types would slip their hands between my thighs, if I let down my guard. I hope that has changed, at least somewhat by now. Still, so many people went out of their way to help us and protect us, which was such a pleasant surprise. Even when some friendly guys locked us in a Medellin warehouse for the night, sleeping among big cellophane-wrapped bales of white stuff, it was for our own safety. And no, we hadn't a clue what that white stuff actually was! We didn't figure that out until later.

"While I did have to deal with being molested on a regular basis, that was just the deal at the time in Latin America."I

THE most non-2025 statement or mentality I've ever read. You're supposed to be traumatized for life, catatonic, and on meds if this happened today.

[quote]Ass, grass, or gas.

[quote]Sounds like a great update to fuck, marry, kill [R26]!

You've got that backwards, [r28]. "Ass, grass, or gas" came first.

Ass, grass or gas. Nobody rides for free.

Can't get enough of those pictures/

Take me to Coos Bay!

R55 – That’s an insane trip for any year, let alone 1978. I’d be nervous doing it now with Google Maps, WhatsApp, and a backup battery pack. How did your parents not have a stroke when you told them?

My parents were out west when I spur-of-the-moment decided to embark on that adventure. Being a coward, I intended just to take off while they were away. Unfortunately for me, they returned early from their trip so I was forced to 'fess up. They were NOT pleased. I had always been a dutiful daughter and good student but I was determined to go, come hell or high water. My parents were pretty worried, of course, but they, somehow, rolled with it and as I said, my pop even dropped us off on the expressway with a sign that read "Mexico". Even today, that blows my mind!

"I expected that story to conclude with that none of those photographed were never seen alive again."

If we put the pictures in a slide show, it could be like the IN MEMORIAM section of the Oscars. But for serial killers.

Maybe accompanied by (in the arms of the) ANGEL?

If he was driving Nevada City, CA to SF some of these young people would be.... suburban foothills Or Sac kids trying to get down to SF? I don't remember this episode of Eight is Enough. Maybe these photos aren't all one route.

Risk is an interesting thing. Many things we do have risks. We live in an age in which the risks we take are codified into proper and improper risk. Our risk options are ranked into acceptable and crazy risk a hierarchy of acceptable and unacceptable risk. I believe driving or being a passenger in a car is way more dangerous than almost anything most do. As a raft guide I was hired to take total city creatures into the wilderness and put them on a boat and run them through rapids often in complete wilderness roadless and isolated. Sometimes for days at a time, My favorite clients were shit hard city kids that were at risk youth kids that had been busted for being gang bangers in L.A. hoods. They had been assigned to "diversion programs that brought them to us. "These, often strong smart kids were often terrified of the wilderness and followed orders better than any trained Marine. When asked about the dangers of what we were about to embark upon people would ask what is the dangerous part of this trip I would tell the drive here.

My God. What a weirdo. I don’t care if he was benign or not it’s weird. Like even if MJ never touched a kid just his wanting to hang with them exclusively is weird.

It was such a different world (and as an old man who takes a dim view of the current culture, politics, art, and technology, it was a much superior world then.)

In California in the early 70s the hippie ethos was still widespread, and picking up hitchhikers was a way to demonstrate care and unity. I used to hitchhike and it was always an adventure, I always felt like a mix of an anthropologist and an outlaw. Hwy 1 at that time went straight through Santa Barbara with stoplights downtown. On a sunny Sunday in summer there would be hundreds of hitchhikers thumbing it at the lights. A supermarket of young and "free spirited" adventurers.

R55 In 1969 a good friend, a willowy and beautiful blonde woman, hitchhiked from Israel to Persia and back through Turkey.. 19... and alone. Just for the adventure. She not only survived, she remains today a courageous and inimitably strong personality, active and lovely. I hitchhiked throughout France in 1972 and never had trouble, though I was ready for it.

R66 that’s lovely prose, Acid Grandfather