Hitching Your Wagon to a Star

What that phrase meant in the mid-1800s—was the “camel of the prairie,” the small wooden wagon carrying some 400,000 people west, the Conestoga wagon. A lot of romance has embraced the wagon trains of 1843 to 1870 that cut ruts into the lands west of the Mississippi River, but real life in those caravans was anything but romantic. The Conestoga wagons were typically 10 feet long, 4 feet wide and 2 feet deep, covered by hoops over which canvas was stretched. The name came from its Pennsylva