Conestoga Wagon
notes: label: Description
content: Pennsylvania Germans near the Conestoga River first made Conestoga wagons around 1750 to haul freight. By the 1810s, improved roads to Pittsburgh and Wheeling, Virginia (now West Virginia) stimulated trade between Philadelphia, Baltimore, and settlers near the Ohio River. Wagoners with horse-drawn Conestoga wagons carried supplies and finished goods westward on three- to four-week journeys and returned with flour, whiskey, tobacco, and other products. The Conestoga wagon’s curved shape shifted cargo toward the center and prevented items from sliding on mountain slopes. Railroads replaced Conestoga wagons by the 1850s, but the prairie schooner, a lightweight, flat variant, carried pioneer settlers from Missouri to the West Coast.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view (right side board; fragment, right side board; left side board; lazy board)
label: Location
content: Currently not on view (bows)
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
label: Location
content: Currently not on view (replica cover)
label: Location
content: Currently not on view (feed box)
setName: label: See more items in
content: Work and Industry: Transportation, Road
label: See more items in
content: Transportation
label: See more items in
content: Road Transportation
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: TR.321453
label: catalog number
content: 321453
label: accession number
content: 243296
objectType: label: Object Name
content: wagon
label: Other Terms
content: Road
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: overall: 8 ft x 7 ft x 18 ft; 2.4384 m x 2.1336 m x 5.4864 m