Remember, Walla Walla was founded on wheat. In 1899 they raised it for about 25 cents a bushel and the average yield was 25 bushels per acre. I tried to discover what wheat prices were back then but didn't find a quick answer. If you can discover it, let me know! The Walla Walla Daily Statesman reported in 1899 that residents:
Babcock had 5,300 acres in wheat
Reser had 4,500 acres
Pickard had 2,800 acres
Upton had 2,200 acres
Bradbury had 2,200 acres
Struthers had 2,000 acres
Crocker had 2,000 acres
Wheeler had 1,500 acres
Wilson had 1,400 acres
Welch had 1,200 acres
Dat's a LOTTA WHEAT !!! No wonder they need new-fangled machinery, and those steam engines were thirsty beasts. Some early steam engines were the Case, Advance Rumley, Russel, Minneapolis, Best Gaar Scott... Lots of competition for the farmer's dollar.
But waggoners were still necessary. So, someone built a water wagon just for those thirsty steam engines:
You drive it down into the nearest body of water and let 'er fill herself up! (Worst case scenario had the driver using a bucket to fill it - what a major bummer THAT would have been!!!!)
Another specialized wagon was the "header box" wagon that was used in harvesting the wheat:
This baby was enormous. As long as a wagon's axles were kept well-greased and out of the winter weather, they lasted a long, long time. Why one side was twice as high as the other I'm not sure. Maybe it was as wide as a stalk of wheat was tall, and the "head" stacked higher than the base of the stalk so it needed a higher side? Nowadays agriculture colleges like Texas A&M have downsized crops so that all the growth is in the harvestable part of a plant and the stalk is a very minimum height. Pretty smart, huh? I wouldn't know whether to downsize the wagon or just load more crop into it...
If
you're having trouble with the Comment feature, please feel free to use our
blog email
to
reach us.
No comments:
Post a Comment