Description: The Ohio State School for the Blind utilized models, like this one, to allow its students to perceive the shape of large buildings they would otherwise be unable to experience. Models of stagecoaches and covered wagons are seen being constructed in this photo. Attached document reads: In the time before railroad trains and automobiles were invented people traveled from one town to another in such a public conveyance as this coach. This particular type of coach was used as the trains are used today, a set rate was paid for every miles traveled. It was this coach that carried the early gold hunters across the great western prairies from Dodge City, Kansas, to San Francisco. These coaches all belonged to the Wells Fargo company who also owned and operated the Pony Express. One the inside of the coach six people could sit. This was considered the safest and most comfortable place to ride and was usually occupied by the women. On top, of course, was the driver who had the responsibility of the team of four or sometimes six horses. Usually there was at least one guard who rode with the driver, whose responsibility it was to see that bandits, both Indian and White did not molest the coach and its valuable cargo. The coaches were not as comfortable as they could have been. The seats were upholstered in leather, as a general rule, but the springs were made either of leather straps or very crude hand forged iron. It was difficult to turn the coach sharply or guide it very carefully since the body set on the axels and was not provided with wheel wells. These wheel wells were indentations in the body of such a cab which could have allow- ed the wheels to turn either to right or left much more freely. However, they were not to come for a considerable time as yet. So instead of having these wells, the axles were made very wide to enable the coach to turn more quickly. The passenger's belongings and freight were stowed in the little pen which is located on top of the cab. Additional freight could be fastened to a platform in the back of some of the coaches underneath the driver's seat. Of course, travel by this method was both dangerous and slow. The coach traveled only during the daytime, staying at wayside inns at night. The roads were poor, often only a patch across the plains. It was not particularly unusual to have a stage come into the town, the horses in full gallop, foam flecked and red eyed with fright. Often too they wrought the driver or guard or perhaps a passenger wounded or killed in an encounter with robbers or Indians. The passengers all went armed, as a matter of course, and often a running fight would take place with the lawless men of the plains. The days of Buffalo Bill Cody and the Wells Fargo Express were days of quick fortunes and quicker poverty, of a vast empire of gold and silver and rolling Oregon farms, a day which changed but did not entirely die with the coming of the Iron Horse. COVERED WAGON To understand the background and use of this wagon it will be necessary to go back to the days of immediately following the Revolutionary War. When General Washington dismissed his army and the war was truly over, the country was faced with a depression such as we have just witness in the last few years. This depression was caused by two things. In the first place the young country had no stable currency and the paper money which Congress issued rapidly became practically worthless. This fact added to the dumping of hundreds of soldiers backs onto the country means of supporting themselves. General Washington was actively concerned with the welfare of these men who had given so long and so loyally that the nation might be free. In the case where the men had ever owned anything in the way of homes, or farms, these had either been confiscated or ruined by the long years of neglect. What was to be done with these men and their families? After the purchase of the Louisiana Territory it was obvious that there was an enormous tract of very fertile and beautiful land waiting beyond the mountains for settlers. These settlers were not hard to find. They gathered their belongings and families and departed to new hope and a new life, after the horrors of the war, in a new home. The old soldiers remembered the wagons which had done such service in transporting ammunition during the war. They recalled that the conventional wagon of the day --- four wheels with removable bed resting on the axels --- had been converted into an ammunition conveyance by fastening hoopes of willow to the side of the bed so as to form a support for the canvas which made the roof. What could be more natural than that these men should adopt this same kind of wagon to carry their household effects and families over the mountains to their new homes. Countless stories could be told of the adventurers of the type of wagon which got its start then. Many times settlers in bands were attacked by Indians and all the members killed. Other times death met them in the form of disease or lack of food or water, but for every one who died many (the number is of course not known) lived to reach new homes, at first in Ohio, then choice sports further and further west, until the Pacific was reached. This wagon was the accepted means of conveyance for any who hoped to take his household with him. the method of locomotion varied with the person who drove and with the kind of territory through which the people were to travel. Sometimes mules were used, but more often oxen or horses did the heavy work of moving the cumberson and heavy wagons. The people who traveled in this uncomfortable conveyance were not, as may be suspected, the poorest and crudest in the country. There rests in the museum in Denver today definite proof of this. There is a tiny spinet (the ancestor of the modern day piano) which is built of beautiful rosewood, obviously expensive and probably imported from England. The story of this lovely piano is simple. It was found on a prairie not far from Denver by a band of settlers in the smoldering debris of what had once been a caravan of settlers. The people who had driven the oxen were all kead, killed by Indians, but the following band of settlers had been so close behind that they were able to come up before the fire had destroyed the wreckage of the wagons. Who owned that spinet and where they were going, no one knows. Wave upon wave of settlers continued to come despite the hardships and dangers and they came in their time proven covered wagons. View on Ohio Memory.
Image ID: SA1039AV_B11F04_25_001
Subjects: Models; Schools--Ohio; Students; Ohio State School for the Blind; Blind--Education--Ohio--Columbus; Ohio--History--Pictorial works; Federal Writers' Project
Places: Columbus (Ohio); Franklin County (Ohio)