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John Bidwell (1819-1900) http://tinyurl.com/Bidwell

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California Cart

From In California Before the Gold Rush, 1890.

Reader: Daniel Maloney

In California, we often wish for better public transportation. But even if that wish came true, our long love affair with private transportation says many of us would still prefer to be in the driver's seat.

California pioneer John Bidwell helped organize one of the first overland parties to California, an exhaustive journey that took almost half a year before the expedition arrived. In a late-life reminiscence, Bidwell recalls the inauspicious state of vehicular technology in 1840's California,

Tra Cart, photograph in Life magazine, photographer, date unknown. Larger.

. . . there was not in California any vehicle except a rude California cart; the wheels were without tires, and were made by felling an oak tree and hewing it down till it made a solid wheel nearly a foot thick at the rim and a little larger where the axel went through. . . . A small tree required but little hewing and shaping to answer for an axel. These carts were always drawn by oxen, the yoke being lashed with rawhide to the horns. To lubricate the axel, they used soap, . . . carrying along for the purpose a big pail of thick soapsuds which was constantly put in the box or hole; but you could generally tell when a California cart was coming half a mile away by the squeeking. I have seen the families of the wealthiest people go long distances at the rate of thirty miles or more a day, visiting in one of these clumsy two-wheeled vehicles.

Bidwell served as a California congressman and ran three unsuccessful campaigns for governor. But he may be best remembered for working his ranch near Chico and for his remarkable memoirs.