Classic versions boasted a length of more than 15 feet, wood-grain sides, a tow hitch for a camper, a big V-8 engine, and seating for a family of eight.

This week, a global club based in Butler County will celebrate that behemoth of the 1970s American highway and stalwart of Beach Boys surfing tunes — the station wagon.

Chuck Snyder, of Penn Township, is the last surviving charter member of the International Station Wagon Club, which is based in his home.

Snyder said station wagons of all makes and years will invade Butler during the 20th annual Club Meet to be held Tuesday through Saturday.

The culmination of the week will be a car show from noon to 4 p.m. Saturday at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Butler, where station wagons owned by club members will mix with those owned by locals.

Those who bring a “wagon” to show will pay $10, but viewing the vehicles is free. Snyder expects about 50 wagons to be displayed.

Snyder will bring his 1974 Mercury Montego Villager MX to the show.

“It’s been in Butler its whole life,” he said. “It resided on Duffy Road for most of its life. I bought it in 2002.”

Snyder is a dedicated Ford man, and bought the Montego because Mercury was a division of Ford Motor Company.

The Montego has a 351 Cleveland motor, wood grain on the sides, and a third rear bench seat facing the back windshield.

“Kids would look out the back window and make faces at the car behind them,” he said of the rear-facing seat.

Snyder’s fondness for station wagons indeed stems from his youth, which was full of the vast vehicles.

“I grew up riding in station wagons. I took my driver’s test in a station wagon,” Snyder said.

He learned to drive in a 1958 Plymouth station wagon, which he said is a model from the most unusual decade in station wagon manufacturing.

“They were very colorful cars at that period, and they had fins,” Snyder said of the 1950s wagons. “They were unique, and that’s what many of us remember from our childhoods.”

He said the station wagon’s name belies its origin, as a wooden version known as a “depot hack” was used to ferry people and their luggage from train stations to hotels beginning in the 1920s.

Manufacturers sent a car chassis to a builder to add the wooden addition that would make it a station wagon, but that system ceased in the 1940s.

“Then the big automakers said, ‘We can build these ourselves,’” Snyder said.

The large and popular family cars continued to be manufactured — using steel — through the 1970s.

“In the 1980s, vehicles started to become smaller, and the station wagons became smaller also,” Snyder said. “My wife drives a 1982 Plymouth Reliant station wagon, which was made by Chrysler.”

Then a new vehicle meant to accommodate families arrived on the market.

“Station wagons started to fade out a little because of minivans,” Snyder said. “They came in the 1980s, and that started to kill wagons a bit, but they were still a good product.”

The Ford Taurus station wagon was a midsize model that proved immensely popular in the 1980s.

Snyder said Ford, Chevy and GM continued to manufacture station wagons through the first half of the 1990s.

“That was up until about 1996, and you started see them kind of fading away after that,” Snyder said. “They became even more rare in the 2000s.”

He said the small wagons manufactured today by Subaru and other companies are considered SUVs by station wagon purists like himself.

“They look like wagons, but they are not wagons,” Snyder said.

He said in recent years, the most popular wagon at the annual Club Meet has been the 1996 Buick Roadmaster.

“That was the last year for GM’s big wagons,” Snyder said.

The club’s annual events have been held in Virginia, Ohio, New England and other regional sites.

In Butler, club members who attend will be based at the Hampton Inn in Butler Crossings.

On Tuesday, they will meet for dinner, tour the Harmony Museum, have a picnic at McConnell’s Mill and check out a transportation museum in Harlansburg.

“This group likes ice cream, so we’ll probably make any number of stops in the evening,” Snyder said.

Ted Sobek, of South Park, will bring his Wimbledon white 1972 Galaxy Country Sedan station wagon to the meet.

Like Snyder, Sobek appreciates the historical value of the station wagon.

“And wagons are, of course, a part of history, so preserving that for the future generations is what you want to do,” he said.

Sobek said he found the Galaxy in Quebec, Ontario, six or seven years ago.

He traveled to Canada to retrieve the wagon, which had 25,000 original miles at that time.

Sobek said the owner had a bicycle shop near his house and pedaled to work each day.

The only real mileage the wagon saw was when the man took his family on a vacation in their camper each year.

Delighted with his find, Sobek proceeded to the department of motor vehicles to begin the process of changing the Galaxy’s ownership.

It was then Sobek discovered Quebec does not title vehicles, and the best officials could do was to register the car.

When the completed registration was handed to Sobek, he immediately noticed it was done in French.

When Sobek attempted to register the vehicle when he got home, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation insisted on a title.

Sobek submitted the registration, and was told PennDOT would have to hire a certified interpreter to create a title.

“I finally went to my state representative with my three letters from PennDOT,” he said. “It finally got titled.”

Sobek said anyone who is interested in station wagons or owned one in the past should come to the car show Saturday.

“It’s something everyone should come out and see,” he said.