Covered Wagon

COVERED WAGON

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COVERED WAGON, the means of transcontinental transportation used for two centuries of American history. The covered wagon was fundamentally a wagon box with a framework of hoop-shaped slats over which a canvas tent was stretched to make a "covered" wagon. Each wagon was drawn by several teams of horses, mules, or oxen. Many were boat shaped with oarlocks so they might be floated over streams, the animals swimming across.

Although derived from the Conestoga wagons built in Lancaster, Pa., in the early eighteenth century, the covered wagon used by emigrants on the Oregon and California trails differed in size, design, and purpose. Conestoga wagons were primarily designed to haul heavy goods for trade along the eastern coast, while smaller covered wagons were the vehicle of choice for emigrant groups headed to western destinations.

Emigrants using covered wagons assembled at such points west of the Missouri River as Independence, Mo., and Council Grove, Kans., and organized into caravans—called wagon trains—for companionship and protection. Emigrants usually took between four and six months to make the two-thousand-mile trek that lay between the Missouri and the Pacific Ocean. Although the threat of Indian attack was small, emigrants would often draw their wagons into a circle to serve as a corral for their animals and post sentinels to guard against livestock raids. Covered wagons remain in museums, including the Conestoga wagon original at Pittsburgh, Pa., and Ezra Meeker's prairie schooner at Tacoma, Wash.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dunbar, Seymour. History of Travel in America. Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill, 1915.

Winther, Oscar Osborn. The Transportation Frontier: Trans-Mississippi West, 1865–1890. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964.

Keith Clark / f. b.

See also Oregon Trail ; Transportation and Travel .