| Dictionary: prairie schooner |
| 5min Related Video: prairie schooner |
| US History Encyclopedia: Prairie Schooner |
Prairie Schooner, a wagon used for long-distance travel and freight transport in the nineteenth century. The wagon was made with six or seven arching wooden bows supporting a canvas cover. Seen from a distance, the vehicle so resembled a ship at sea as to suggest the name. Mormons, California gold-seekers, emigrants to Oregon, freighters operating on the Great Plains, and settlers seeking homesteads all used the schooner after it was brought into common use in the Santa Fe trade soon after 1821. It was not only the chief means for the transportation of goods, but it also provided a home for pioneer families as they journeyed west in search of land.
Bibliography
Dunbar, Seymour. History of Travel in America. Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill, 1915.
Winther, Oscar Osborn. The Transportation Frontier: Trans-Mississippi West, 1865–1890. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964.
| Columbia Encyclopedia: prairie schooner |
| WordNet: prairie schooner |
The noun has one meaning:
Meaning #1:
a large wagon with broad wheels and an arched canvas top; used by the United States pioneers to cross the prairies in the 19th century
Synonyms: covered wagon, Conestoga wagon, Conestoga, prairie wagon
| Conestoga Wagon | |
| Oregon Trail | |
| Transportation and Travel |
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Copyrights:
![]() | Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more | |
![]() | US History Encyclopedia. © 2006 through a partnership of Answers Corporation. All rights reserved. Read more | |
![]() | Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/. Read more | |
![]() | WordNet. WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. Read more |
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