So easy for
us today to go to the store and buy just about anything we want. A drive on any
interstate will allow you to quickly see how all those goods get there every
day. Trucks and trains and in some cases planes move our goods today, making
sure I can grab a fresh pineapple on a cold snowy November day in Wyoming. But how
did they do it in the old days, the really old days? Mule Skinners and Bull Whackers moved the
goods.
From about 1825,
freighters started moving goods to outlying settlements and forts. When the
1860s came, with the transcontinental railroad, the freighting business became one
of the busiest in the west. Freighters moved goods from and too the railroad,
supplying goods needed for expansion and settlement of the new west.
Freighters,
for protection and because of the amount of goods needed, traveled in huge slow
moving overland trains. These trains consisted of two dozen or more wagons,
each carrying as much as three tons of goods. The wagons were pulled by huge
teams of six pair of oxen or several pair of mules, depending on the weight of
the freight. Not fast but most efficient.
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| Train Stopped for the Day |
Mule Drivers
were known as mule-skinners and the oxen drivers as bull-whackers, all using
their bull whips most efficiently to nip black flies away from the oxen and mules.
This slow but efficient way to move goods allowed the new citizens of the west
to buy the same coffee, canned peaches and yards of calico that were offered on
the two coasts. It lasted into the 1900s until motor trucks and better roads
allowed for the bull-whackers and mule-skinners to die off in favor of truck
drivers.
