2 Days Until Trek - Wagons

On Trek, you will spend many waking hours pulling and pushing your handcart and your sleeping hours next to it. Only a small portion of Latter-day Saint pioneers came west with handcarts. Most traveled in wagon companies, though many of them also walked to Zion.

For the time pioneers were on the trail, their wagons and handcarts were their homes. And, like if you were to move from one home to another, they also served as their "moving vans." Pioneers needed to take everything they needed for their new homes or make things from the natural resources there. During our few days of Trek, notice the many vehicles used to support this experience. Of course, there will be the handcarts, but also trucks to pull refrigerated trailers full of food, supplies, medical teams and supplies, and porta-potties, called in past Treks, "the Emerald City." Vehicles were an important part of westward migration and today's Treks.

"The Saints used all kinds of wagons, buggies, and carriages as they set out westward. Most were ordinary reinforced farm wagons, about ten to twelve feet long and about four feet wide; generally made of hardwoods such as ash, elm, maple, hickory, and oak with hoops over which twilled cotton cloth or waterproof canvas was spread. These coverings could be closed at each end. The huge, lumbering Conestoga wagons, beloved of Hollywood, were seldom seen on the trail.

"Because the trail required fording so many streams, the wagon bottoms were usually caulked or covered with canvas so they would float. The pioneers of 1847 had great luck with a homemade boat made of leather covering a wooden frame. They called it the 'Revenue Cutter.' Oregon-bound pioneers used animal hides as early as 1843 to cover canoes.

"In the main [Latter-day Saint] exodus of 1848, the wagons were marked with the initials of their leaders or numbered according to whatever group they belonged to in an attempt to keep better order in the daily line of march. These numbers also sometimes indicated who was first in line to cross the river. [Latter-day Saints] seldom named their wagon tops, but other pioneers painted on names and mottos like 'Badgers,' 'Hoosiers,' 'Rough and Ready,' or 'Ho! for California' in bold letters."

Selection from Stanley B. and Violet T. Kimball's 2011 book, Villages on Wheels: A Social History of the Gathering to Zion.