A covered wagon in which sheep herders live. The wagon is entered through a split
(Dutch) door in the firont from which draft animals can be reined as they pull the camp.
The interior arrangement of wood or gas cook stove on the right (as the camp is entered),
cabinets on the left, and bed spanning the rear is almost ubiquitous. A table either folds
up or slides underneath the bed frame, and there are bench seats along the walls with
storage beneath them on either side of the central table. The top of the older camps is
canvas stretched across wooden bows, but in the 1990s most are aluminum-topped. The
running gear used to be wooden wagon firames, but more recent, homemade camps use
old truck chassis, axles, and wheels with rubber tires, and they are pulled by pickup
trucks. The largest sheep camps of this design are about 7 feet wide and 16 feet long and
are found throughout the Intermountain West. Larger camp wagons of a completely
different design are found in the San Joaquin Valley of California. These are large,
rolling wooden boxes with movable, rather than builtin, furniture. They have large
shutters that span the wagon’s length on both sides and swing up to provide ventilation
through screened, full-length openings.
In the Intermountain West, sheep camps are used by some herders all year long, and
by others mostly in the winter months, depending on the range where they tend their
flocks. In steep, mountainous country, during the summer when sheep prefer the high
mountain meadows to the hot, brushy valley floors, herders often pack their camp on
pack horses or mules and sleep in canvas “teepee tents” (pyramidal, one- or two-man
tents suspended from two poles that form an A-frame). In the winter, the sheep are
moved to the lower reaches and the herders live in a sheep wagon. Whether living in
teepee tents or sheep wagons, herders are regularly supplied by a camp tender, often the
sheep boss for the ranch who owns the sheep and who hires the herders. A small “commissary wagon,” containing mostly feed for the horses and dogs, is often trailed
behind the main camp.
James Candlish, a blacksmith in Rawlins, Wyoming, is often credited as being the
inventor of the sheep camp. In 1884, however, the same year Candlish reportedly built
his first camp, an account of an almost identical contrivance appeared in a London
publication, Prairie Experiences in Handling Cattle and Sheep, by Major W.Shepperd.
The fact that sheep camp is so simple and obvious, and the fact that wagons of similar, if
not identical, design were being built in several places at the same time, are strong
indicators that there were probably several inventors; the sheep camp was in all
likelihood a polygenetic creation. The Gypsy caravan of Europe is similar in form and
use to the more modern sheep camp, but proving any direct connection in the
development of one from the other has proved fruitless.
The first sheep camps were undoubtedly homemade, but by about 1892 the Schulte
Hardware Company of Casper, Wyoming, was commissioned to construct a sheep wagon
based on the older, traditional form. The first major manufacturer of such wagons was the
Ahlander Company of Provo, Utah, which started production in 1918. Between 1920 and
1976, their last year in business, Ahlander produced more than 3,000 of their famous
“Home on the Range” model, many of which are still in use in the 1990s. Other
commercial manufacturers were the Studebaker Company, the Consolidated Wagon and
Machine Works, Madsen, and Eddy. All but Studebaker were located in Utah. In 1995
there were two commercial builders still advertising in the National Wool Grower: the
Wilson Brother’s company in Midway, Utah, and Western Wagons in Ten Sleep,
Wyoming.
In addition to its practical use, the sheep camp has become a traditional symbol for the
Western sheep industry. The nostalgic icon of an old sheep wagon and a grizzled herder
appears as the logo for the National Wool Growers Association Memorial Fund and
Heritage Foundation, as well as in cartoons targeted for people in the wool-growing
business.
The traditional form of the Intermountain sheep camp, whether homemade or
commercially manufactured, has remained essentially unchanged for more than 100
years. Its use on the range continues, and its evolution as a traditional symbol of the
Western sheep industry continues to grow.
Blanton Owen
References
Lane, Richard, and William A.Douglass. 1985. Basque Sheep Herders of the American West: A
Photographic Documentary. Reno: University of Nevada Press.
Shepperd, Major W. 1884. Prairie Experiences in Handling Cattle and Sheep. London: Chapman
and Hall.
Tanner, Ogden. 1977. Candlishs Moveable Home on the Range. In The Ranchers. Alexandria, VA:
Time-Life Books, pp. 96–97.