The Oregon Trail

by Rinker Buck

  Within a few years, business-minded visionaries saw an opportunity to transform a cottage industry into manufacturing enterprises. After 1850, when the Oregon Trail traffic took off because of the Gold Rush and the exodus of the Mormons to Utah, wagon manufacturing became big business, a major engine that drove an expanding economy. Many companies that would become enduring American brand names—John Deere, Studebaker, Sears, Roebuck—began by manufacturing wagons, adopting the common design of the farm-built mover’s wagon and mass-producing it for a growing market. Distinctive designs and wagon features were introduced by competition in the wagon business, which encouraged endless experimentation. By the late 1850s, a nautical-looking wagon with flared sides and tongue-and-groove flooring, to improve flotation, was developed in response to pioneer demand for a better vehicle for crossing rivers. To advertise their superior marine handling, these designs became known as “prairie schooners,” a term that stuck and eventually referred to almost any wagon that crossed the plains. Overlanders who expected to establish dry goods companies or lumber mills on the frontier, and wanted to be already set up for business, knew they could rely on the sturdy designs of the J. Murphy Wagon Company of St. Louis, which supplied many of the military escort wagons used during the Civil War, or the Turnbull Wagon Company of Defiance, Ohio. Most of these names have faded from history. But they were great wagons, built to withstand a lot of abuse and to last forever. You can still see restored Murphys and Turnbulls rolling along in July Fourth parades today.

  These new companies did what nascent manufacturers always do—they transformed a dispersed cottage industry of handcrafted products into one that was organized according to factory practices. Wagon assembly lines (no, Henry Ford did not invent that), standardized and interchangeable parts, and stronger pieces of cast iron and steel were introduced. Water power and steam engine technology made it possible to quickly and precisely cut axles, bolsters, and other parts of the running gear. Improvements in metal forging helped develop iron and later steel “skeins,” thimble-shaped structures that connected the axle to the wheel hub, replacing the wooden parts of the eighteenth century. Kilns were built to cure wooden parts uniformly so they wouldn’t crack when exposed to seasonal changes in humidity. Wheel hubs and spokes were precisely engineered and then fitted together at wheelwright stations located where they were needed—near the spot on the factory floor where the finished running gears were completed.

  By the mid-1850s wagon prices had stabilized at about $75 apiece, and replacing broken parts no longer required a long day in the barn with wood planes, ball-peen hammers, and an anvil. Because wagon making had been standardized, parts could be ordered by mail. Later, a telegraphic code of dedicated shorthand words—to save money on telegraph costs—was devoted just to ordering wagon parts. If a homesteader or his distant wagon dealer out west needed the board for a nine-inch top box, he telegraphed for a “Becalm.” The thirteen-inch tip top box was a “Bray.” A cast-iron axle skein was an “Apollo.” The tougher steel skein was an “Ape.”

  Eventually the wagon-making business became concentrated in the emerging manufacturing centers of the Midwest—John Deere in Moline, Illinois, Studebaker and Sears, Roebuck in South Bend, Indiana, and Murphy and Weber & Damme in St. Louis. Fortunes were made manufacturing wagons, first for the overland trail traffic, and then during the huge government stimulus provided by the Civil War, and more than thirty wagon companies exhibited their models at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The business was exemplified by an enterprising German-American whose name became virtually synonymous with the Oregon Trail.

  Peter Schuttler was a German immigrant who arrived in New York in 1834, when he was twenty-two years old. He bounced around at the edge of the frontier for several years, learning wagon building in western New York and wheelwrighting in Ohio, gaining a reputation as an innovator who could figure out how to make parts with saws instead of axes, and who designed his own machinery and lathes. After his first two wagon shops in Ohio failed, Schuttler rode a buggy across the plains to Chicago, where he briefly dabbled with brewing beer because he considered the wagon-building field too crowded. (At the time, Chicago had about four thousand adult citizens, and thirteen wagon shops.) But in 1843, after he soured on brewing, Schuttler opened up a wagon works at the corner of Randolph and Franklin streets, living with his family in a wooden shanty behind his shop.

  Schuttler’s timing was fortuitous. In the early 1840s, travel along the Oregon Trail had been just a trickle—no more than two hundred pioneers a year. But the reverberations of the Panic of 1837, which had virtually destroyed American farming, were still being felt, and this had sent an army of essentially homeless families west in search of new opportunities and cheap land. In 1843, a missionary and an experienced western wagon traveler, Marcus Whitman, led an exodus of about a thousand pioneers across the plains, and after that Oregon Trail traffic grew dramatically every year, culminating in the estimated forty thousand wagon travelers who flocked to the trail in the Gold Rush year of 1849.

  Schuttler, who would eventually gather one of the great Chicago fortunes, just grew with the trail from there. He was as disciplined and methodical as a Shaker, and early on he saw the need to build parts that were prone to breakage with stouter grades of iron, and that carefully machined wheel spokes and hubs were essential for the reputation of a wagon company. He also understood the need to specialize, and soon scuttled the less lucrative lines of small buggies and carriages that were dragging other wagon makers down, concentrating instead on the design and parts of the standard farm wagon. Schuttler also profited from disaster. In 1850 his original wooden shop burned to the ground, but he used this as an opportunity to build a new, fireproof brick factory that incorporated everything he had learned about building wagons over the past fifteen years. The Peter Schuttler works, which eventually covered more than ten acres, became one of Chicago’s biggest factories, turning out 1,800 wagons a year.

  Schuttler and the other large wagon manufacturers played a critical role in accelerating America’s industrial revolution. Their metalworking, in particular, became a principal reason that America began overtaking Britain as an industrial power by the end of the nineteenth century. The demands of producing thousands of wagons every year for the overland trails forced the wagon makers to efficiently mass-produce iron and steel parts—wheel hubs, running gear braces, brakes—that had once been made by hand. The clunky and complex old Conestoga, with dozens of handmade parts for each wagon, was gradually replaced by a more elegant, simpler box wagon that was now the product of a briskly moving factory operation.

  The ten-acre Peter Schuttler works was the largest factory in Chicago, and supplying the overland trails with wagons created one of the great nineteenth-century fortunes.

  The major wagon manufacturers were located in river towns, with good access to the Mississippi River transportation system, which proved decisive for delivering their products. As the Oregon Trail traffic picked up in the 1840s, outfitters along the Missouri river above Kansas City were ordering hundreds of wagons a year in anticipation of a new and larger emigration every spring, and Schuttler’s big works near the Illinois River, and his ability to meet the demand, placed him in a strong position. Shipping efficiency was key. Most of the wagons Schuttler dispatched to the West were not completely assembled at the factory. The running gear and wheels were bundled together and stacked on top of each other on big flatboats and, later, barges pulled by steamboats. The wagon boxes were loaded with all of the remaining parts—tongues, seats, barrels, roof bows—and stacked neatly beside the running gear. The load of wagon boxes then rode the Mississippi downstream to its confluence with the Missouri at St. Louis, looking very much like modern container ships. The 350-mile run to the Missouri took about three weeks. By the end of April every year, the wharves and cleared fields of Missouri River towns like St. Joseph, Weston, and Independence gleamed with tall columns of green wagons, and over time an efficient deal
ership network was established.

  A Peter Schuttler advertisement from the 1850s. Aggressive marketing and a strong dealership network gave Schuttler an advantage over competitors like Studebaker and John Deere.

  The Schuttler wagons were strong and durable, but not really much better than a Springfield or a Studebaker. The company thrived because Schuttler was a lively marketer who understood that word of mouth and appearances meant a great deal. Schuttler flooded the frontier with attractive pamphlets advertising his wagons and dispensed from Chicago the kind of pious commercial mottoes that Americans have always liked to consume. (“The Old Reliable Peter Schuttler,” “Peter Schuttler Wagons Spell QUALITY.”) In 1855, when the Mormons placed an order for thirty-five wagons to support their next wagon train to Utah, Schuttler made sure that the market knew why. He had guaranteed the Mormon elders that each wagon could hold 3,500 pounds. The Mormons were not liked in America, but their achievements on the Oregon Trail couldn’t be denied and this undoubtedly helped Schuttler. The Saints continued to be his best customer. Schuttler was dubbed “The Wagon King of Chicago,” and it is thought that the popular nineteenth-century pioneer phrase for their vehicles, “The Chicago Wagon,” derived from the popularity of the Schuttler wagon on the western trails. The Peter Schuttler wagon was the minivan of the plains, and by the 1880s at least thirty thousand Schuttler wagons had crossed the frontier.

  The wagon king of Chicago forged the industrialist style later perfected by Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and Henry Ford. While pretending to be modest, he was ludicrously self-indulgent. At his factory in Chicago, Schuttler loved to entertain visitors with tales about his humble origins and lifestyle, and he told stories about working eighteen-hour days in the factory and then retiring to his family in the wood shack behind the plant. But by middle age, selling upwards of sixty thousand wagons and owning Chicago’s largest factory had turned him into a rote tycoon. The 1860 census showed that Schuttler was one of three millionaires in Chicago; it had taken him just seventeen years, building wagons at his scale, to achieve that status. The other two millionaires were the Marshall Field department store barons, Potter Palmer and John V. Farwell. The Schuttlers, the Palmers, and the Farwells were soon engaged in one of America’s great mansion-building frenzies, throwing up estates for themselves and their children all over Chicago. Schuttler outdid them all. The new Schuttler shack occupied a whole city block bounded by Adams and Monroe streets, took three years to build, and is variously estimated to have cost between $250,000 and $500,000, or more than $15 million today.

  We tend to associate the creation of the great family fortunes of America with the bloated, monopolistic trusts of such Gilded Age figures as Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, or E. H. Harriman. But Schuttler predated them by almost forty years, never felt that he had to corner the market to succeed, and built his entire fortune out of a single factory that made just one product—wagons.

  And for at least the next century, the American style of transportation—crucial for the nation’s growth—had been defined. The ride was never good, and your spine ached after a day’s run up to North Platte. But your wheels usually got you there because the chassis and box were way overbuilt for the job. And there was another American trait imparted by the covered wagon: spontaneity. Yeah, let’s do it, there is free land out in Oregon. Let’s buy this rig for $75, throw on the top, and find some mules. The covered wagon delivered western dreams, in a hurry. The improvised and rushed wanderlust of the American character—celebrated by observers from Walt Whitman to Ken Kesey—was symbolized by the vehicle that initially crossed the plains.

  The covered wagon’s Erector Set quality also helped the Americans. At the Missouri River jumping-off towns on the frontier, the manufactured pieces could be fitted together into a finished wagon in a single morning. Only a few simple tools were needed—an iron wheel wrench, which usually came with the wagon, a screwdriver for attaching brackets for the bows, a hammer, and maybe a darning needle and thread, for making roll-up windows cut into the canvas. Here the German influence continued. The pioneers called their wagon bonnets “Osnaburgs,” after the town in Germany, Osnabrück, where the stout cotton-hemp canvas, treated with linseed oil, originated. Many pioneers added false bottoms to the wagon bed to store equipment like harness kits or furniture parts that wouldn’t be used every day. Water barrels were attached by building a cantilever platform off the sides, and held in place by leather straps. For her water, Margaret Frink carried india-rubber bottles. It was not generally true that the pioneers painted “Oregon or Bust!” on their canvas tops, as American lore would have it. They usually painted their surnames and their originating town or county on the canvas, in large block letters that could be seen from far away. That way, after an evening spent hunting for game or searching for water, the pioneers could return to the crowded encampments and walk straight to their own wagon.

  The pioneers’ practice of painting names and geographic origins on wagon covers led to an interesting American colloquialism that still exists today. In the early days of the trail, a large number of wagon travelers originated from Pike County in eastern Missouri, an area that was originally settled by backwoodsmen from Kentucky in the 1820s. Many of these painted “From Pike Co., Mo.” on their wagon covers, or just “Pike County” or “Pike,” to make it easier to assemble as a train in the crowded covered wagon camps. Naturally, they began to be called “Pikers.” But because there were so many Pike counties across the country that generated overland emigrants—Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois all have Pike counties—“Pikers” became a broad, generalized term that could refer to any number of wagon companies that crossed in the 1840s and 1850s. The original Pikers from Kentucky and Missouri, in the words of pioneer diarist William Audley Maxwell, were considered “of a ‘backwoods’ class, rather short in culture, and in personal makeup and language, bearing a general air of the extremely rural.” Over time “Pikers” became accepted as a term that referred to people who were slow of speech, plodding, and not ambitious in business. When I was a boy, and I told my father that I had a difficult exam in school the next day, he would say, “Don’t be a Piker, son. Go upstairs and study.” But I’m sure he had no idea that the term originated along the Oregon Trail.

  In The Americans, historian Daniel Boorstin described another important trait of the covered wagon. “The wagon was plainly a community vehicle: everything about it required traveling in groups. To cross deep streams or climb steep slopes the ox teams had to be doubled and the wagons managed one at a time. Many ways were found to use the group’s total resources to conquer obstacles and reduce risk.”

  Indeed, at places like California Hill near Brule, Nebraska, one of the sharpest ascents of the trail, or at the steep descent at Windlass Hill above Ash Hollow, Nebraska, a multitude of hands in the covered wagon trains were available to help. Everything in the wagons was off-loaded and carried uphill by brigades of children and wives. Some men led most of the teams up to the top of the hill and watched them, while others remained below to hook up and drive the doubled teams that towed the wagons over the obstacle. Conversely, at a downhill, the wagons were lightened by brigades of pioneers carrying furniture and cooking utensils to the valley floor. Some men led the teams down, while others remained at the summit to hold the heavy ropes and the prairie-crafted windlasses that lowered the wagons down.

  I’ve always thought that this is why the sight of a covered wagon going by, or a group of them, arouses such primordial emotions. Perhaps we possess a dimly repressed but nevertheless accessible memory of how much community was formed by the necessities and sheer obstacle-climbing along the trail. That’s what the covered wagon represents. Families would never forget the powerful friendships they formed along the trail, or what pioneering did for their own nuclear unit. We have always called this the “pioneering spirit.”

  • • •

  “Pioneering spirit” is a phrase that was used a lot in my f
amily while I was growing up in the 1950s, and it probably explains, too, why I was so drawn to covered wagon travel. I am emotionally connected to my past as a covered wagon traveler—a time when my father was so strapping and young, fun-loving and emotive, a man so wonderful to love. He was a nonconformist in a rigidly conformist age, but I’ve often felt since then that there was a logic behind his eccentricity.

  On our 1958 covered wagon trip, in the evenings in our camp, my father would hold me with one hand by the scruff of my neck and wash my face with his other hand, using a washcloth dipped into a bucket of cold, soapy water. I didn’t particularly like that, but this might have been because my father used the time to remind me of my obligations.

  “Rinker,” my father said during washing one night, “you fought with your brother today. Why do you keep doing that?”

  “Dad. It wasn’t my fault. It was my turn to ride Texas when we got into camp, but Kern stole the horse. So I kicked him when he got off Texas. Big deal.”

  “Well, okay, son,” my father said. “But don’t fight. Next time, come and ask me first, all right? Fighting with your brother is not in the pioneering spirit.”

  On the other hand, there were chores required on a covered wagon trip that I loved to perform.