Designing a Conestoga Wagon

click to enlarge   |   Illustration by Mark D. Ruffner, 1973

My blogging friend Gina of Gina Ceramics recently posted a riveting story about a pioneer family and the scary maneuvering of their Conestoga Wagon. You can read about it here. The story reminded me that I had done an illustration of a Conestoga for the Scott Paper Company, back in the 1970s.

I stained balsa wood blue and inset it into an illustration board, then drew around the sunken "implant" with colored pencils. Today, of course, I'd do it in half the time digitally.

Conestoga Wagons were made by the Pennsylvania Dutch in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Because the Pennsylvania Dutch cartwrights traditionally painted their wagons blue, and the Pennsylvania Dutch wheelwrights traditionally painted their wheels red, the Conestoga wagon is almost always seen in this color combination.

Illustration by Robert Layport, 1973

The toolboxes that hung on the side of the wagon had wrought iron hinges, and the hinge designs, also coming from Lancaster County, are evocative of German metalwork.

Illustration by Paul Rendel or John Banks, 1973

Quoting from the Scott Paper sample: "Shoeing a wheel in a hot cloud of sweat, steam and smoke. Iron rims were cut a full ¾ inch smaller than the circumference of the wheel. They were heated red hot, sledged into place, then doused with water. The iron contracted violently, tightened all the wooden joints, and further emphasized the "dish" in the wheel."

click to enlarge

click to enlarge   |   Scott Paper Company

The Conestoga Wagon was used in the early 1700s when colonial settlements were established in the Appalachians, and into the late 1800s, as pioneers moved all the way to the West Coast.
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A Thanksgiving Afternoon's Collection

When I was much younger, I had a lovely 90-year-old neighbor named Ruth, with whom I became friendly. We visited often and had long conversations, and one day Ruth gave me a small stone box. She said it was jade.

I commented that it must have an interesting story, and Ruth — who had been a teacher — said that it had been given to her "fifty or sixty years ago" by a dean at her school (I remember thinking at the time how interesting that at Ruth's age, whole decades were merging together into single blocks of time.).

That same year, I traveled to Scottsbluff, Nebraska for a Thanksgiving family reunion. On Thanksgiving Day, the weather was unusually balmy, and so the family decided to hike up a mountain in a nearby state park. The Oregon Trail cut through the mountain, and one memorable detail was that one could still see the ruts made from pioneers' Conestoga wagons.

As we walked up the gravel path, I started noticing handsome green stones interspersed here and there. My brother told me that they were probably Wyoming Jade, and that enchanted me all the more. I told my young niece and nephew that I'd pay a dime for each gem that they'd find, and soon the three of us were engrossed in a fun treasure hunt.

I've since discovered that "Wyoming Jade" is actually a misnomer, and that the green pebbles are a lesser grade of the jade family, called "nephrite." But I still like to think of collecting jade treasure on Thanksgiving Day, and today the pebbles live quite appropriately in Ruth's box.

To all my blogging friends, Happy Thanksgiving!