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Sheep wagons: From Old West function to New West fashion
Sheep wagons are usually about 7 to 8 feet wide and about 12 to 16 feet long. Inside the wagon is usually room for one bed or bunks, a small stove, sink and cooking area, storage for clothes and an eating area. Most sheep wagons do not have bathrooms or showers.
Though different companies made sheep wagons, the design almost never changed. They were around 11 feet long and 6½ feet wide; Dutch or double door in the front; sheet-metal cook and heating stove on the right with a narrow stovepipe poking through the roof; bed across the back where the herder slept perpendicular to the door; window above the bed; and shelves everywhere else, including a small table that pulled out from beneath the bed, which was always covered with wool blankets, of course.
There was a small window on each side and possibly a sink. On the wagon’s exterior, carpenters mounted grub boxes between the front and back wheels. The older wagons had tilt-out cupboards for flour, small rails for wash rags, clamps and brackets for brooms and wash pans and wooden drawers for everything from cutlery to granite-ware plates and coffee cups. Snug. Sometimes tidy, the old sheep wagons were portable homes for lonely Greek, Basque, Scotch and Hispano herders who left their families to “follow the sheeps.”
Rawlins, Wyoming, blacksmith James Candlish may have manufactured the first sheep wagon in 1884 after seeing one designed and built by sheep rancher George Ferris. Schulte Hardware Co. of Casper, Wyoming, standardized the design around 1900, but blacksmiths built them around the state. Wealthy ranchers could also order custom sheep wagons from the Studebaker Co. of Indiana or Bayne Manufacturing of Wisconsin. With an average of 1,000 sheep per herder and per wagon, a large sheep ranch might have had as many as 20 wagons.
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Synopsis:
For so long, the sheepwagon was such a common sight on the western landscape that it has been overlooked as an important part of the region s culture. Other than a few articles about the quaint sheepwagon or the lonely life of the rapidly disappearing sheepherder, no definitive history of the western sheep business has been written since 1948.
This photo-intensive book gives the history of the sheepwagon and the surrounding sheep business. Here are chapters on the early days of Western sheep-raising; the origins and manufacturing of sheepwagons; traditional sheepherders: their superstitions, customs and pastimes; women and families who lived in sheepwagons; the Basque influence; and modern-day herders, sheepwagons, and restorers.
Author Weidel spent years interviewing sheepmen and women, sheepherders, wagon builders, and experts for this, the only book on the fascinating first mobile home.
