Conestoga wagon
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Conestoga Wagon is a heavy, broad-wheeled covered freight carrier used extensively during the United States' Westward Expansion in the late 1700s and 1800s. It was large enough to transport loads up to 8 short tons (7 metric tons), and was drawn by 4 to 8 mules or 4 to 6 oxen.
Contents |
[edit] History
The first Conestoga Wagons appeared in New York around 1725 and are thought to have been introduced by Mennonite German settlers in that area, while its name obviously came from the Conestoga Valley in that region. In colonial times the conestoga wagon was popular for southward migration through the Great Appalachian Valley along the Great Wagon Road. After the American Revolution it was used to open up commerce to Pittsburgh and Ohio. In 1820 rates charged were roughly one dollar per 100 pounds per 100 miles ($1 per 7,300 kilogram-kilometers), with speeds about 15 miles (25 km) per day. The Conestoga, often in long wagon trains, was the primary overland freight vehicle over the Appalachians until the development of the railroad. Subsequently it played a role in Western settlement, especially on the Santa Fe Trail, where ox and mule teams could pull its vast cargo with fewer stops for water.
[edit] Design
Of transport wagons that took part in the development of the West, the Conestoga was the most distinctive, with graceful, curved lines that made it recognizable even from a distance. Yet the design was practical. A floor sloped toward the center prevented barrels and grain from falling out on hills. The wheels on both vehicles were made of hardwood with fat iron rims. Broad wheels resisted mud; smaller wheels in front reduced the turning radius and large wheels in the rear softened the ride. They were created to go through mud and travel during bad weather conditions. If necessary, these wheels could be removed to float across rivers if a raft was carried along. The boat-like design lent Conestogas the nickname ships of inland commerce. The raked (slanted) gates were subject to less load stress, and the raked cover protected the interior from the elements.
They had grease buckets on the bottom of the wagon.
[edit] Prairie schooners
The term prairie schooner is often--and mistakenly--used interchangeably with Conestoga wagon. The tall, curved-bottomed, slant-sided vehicles known as Conestogas are sturdy freighter wagons that originated in south-eastern Pennsylvania in the 1730s. These commercial wagons were much too huge, heavy and hard to handle by families emigrating to Oregon, Utah, or California in the nineteenth century. Thus, the westward-bound emigrants’ conveyance of choice was the smaller, lighter, farm-type wagon which could be drawn by fewer teams. Crammed inside these small wagons were supplies for the 2,000-mile journey ahead, a few precious belongings from back East, and tools to help establish their future homes in the West.
It might be helpful to think of the emigrant’s box-like covered wagon as an early version of the moving van, and the Conestoga wagon as a prototype for the modern tractor-trailer.
The emigrants themselves never called their wagons Conestogas or prairie schooners. Nineteenth-century diaries and reminiscences reveal that westering emigrants during the time of their journeys--the 1840s, 1850s, and 1860s--generally referred to their vehicles simply as “wagons” or “waggons.”[1] Travelers crossing the prairie gazed at the lines of white-topped wagons rumbling across the undulating grass and described the wagons as “ships upon the ocean,” or ships on “rolling waves of green from horizon to horizon,” or as resembling “dim sails crossing a rolling sea.” But they never called their wagons “prairie schooners.”
English adventurer Sir Richard F. Burton almost wrote the magic words in his journal in 1860 during an overland trip to Utah when he wrote that the wagon “is literally a "prairie ship: its body is often used as a ferry.”[2]
A few emigrant diaries make references to “prairie schooners,” but only when describing the large, freight-bearing Conestoga wagons that accompanied some military expeditions or commercial ventures. It was not until the pioneers began penning (and romanticizing) their reminiscences during the 1870s and later--long after their migration to the West--that they began calling their own simple wagons “prairie schooners." Even then, some authors near the end of the century felt the term was unusual enough to feel it necessary to explain that an emigrant's wagon “came to be known in those days as a prairie schooner."[3]
[edit] References
- Margaret F. Walker, “Out to Sea on a Prairie Schooner,” Overland Journal, 23 no. 3 (Fall 2005):118-22.
- Sir Richard F. Burton, The City of the Saints, and Across the Rocky Mountains to California (New York: Harper, 1862), 22.
- William A. Maxwell, Days of ’57, A Narrative of Early Emigrant Travel to California by the Ox-Team Method (n.p.: Sunset Publishing, 1915)
