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Students Build Sheep Wagons For Class Project
Students at two high schools in Gillette, Wyo., learned and practiced a broad range of construction skills as they built two authentic sheep wagons for their woodworking class.
“I know the students learned at least two important life lessons building their wagon,” says Pete Stocker, their instructor at Campbell
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Students Build Sheep Wagons For Class Project
Students at two high schools in Gillette, Wyo., learned and practiced a broad range of construction skills as they built two authentic sheep wagons for their woodworking class.
“I know the students learned at least two important life lessons building their wagon,” says Pete Stocker, their instructor at Campbell County High. “The first was patience, and the second was doing things the right way the first time. There were several instances when I had to tell them to take it apart and start over.”
The wagon-building project originated with a former Wyoming state legislator, and funding came from a state education cooperative. In addition to the wagon built by Stocker’s high school class, a second wagon was built by Gillette’s other high school, Thunder Basin. That project was supervised by shop instructor Nick Newman.
Sheep wagons are compact, mobile “cabins on wheels” invented in the 1880s for shepherds in the American West. They allowed shepherds to live on the open range for months at a time while tending their flocks. In 1910, Wyoming had more than 5 million sheep and was the second-largest wool-producing state in the U.S., after Texas, so sheep wagons were popular then.
Stocker said most of the sheep wagon components were purchased from Wyoming businesses, and the running gears were ordered from Weaver Wagons, a custom wagon company in Ohio.
Stocker says one of the most complicated steps during construction was forming the wagon bows. Those arched wooden frames support the canvas top of a sheep wagon. Although wagon bows can be purchased already formed, Stocker and the boys chose to shape them the old-fashioned way, using steam.
“Building the sheep wagon was a really good class project,” Stocker says, “because it involved building and integrating a lot of different parts and procedures, like cabinets and the steamed wagon bows.”
He says that even though it was his first sheep wagon, he was confident the project would be a success, providing students planning to work in the trades after high school with an excellent hands-on building experience.
Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Campbell County High School, 1000 Camel Dr., Gillette, Wyo. 82716.
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