Casper Man Who Built His Own Covered Wagon Likes To Live Like It’s 1869

CASPER — Kim Merchant took some heavy whipping cream and poured it into a quart jar underneath the tarp next to an 1860s-era covered wagon.

It was time to shake things up and make some butter outside the National Trails Historic Interpretive Center.

The 77-year-old musician and historic reenactor loves to talk about wagons and music, and be a living example of how Wyoming’s first pioneers lived when they were brought West in prairie schooners to Casper’s Platte Bridge Station.

Like those hardy explorers who had to do and make for themselves, Merchant’s a hands-on kind of guy. That’s why he makes his own butter while sitting next to the blue covered wagon he built.

“The old farm wagons are basically what they used. I got the plans and you can still buy plans,” he told the group he was taking through a lesson in how the West was really tamed — one settler at a time. “I bought the running gear from a guy up in Buffalo and he helped me with the wheels, some of them needed to be rebuilt.”

Now those weathered wheels have many more miles.

When he first put the wagon together in 2001, Merchant became part of a reenactment wagon train that drove the 600 miles or so on the Bozeman Trail from Fort Laramie to Virginia City, Montana. The trip from June through August 2001 taught him a primary lesson about frontier pilgrim life.

Flat Posterior

First and foremost, Merchant soon learned that all that wagon riding hits a person where he lives.

“Your butt gets flat. The first 10 or 12 days you start to think about, ‘Why don’t I turn around (and go) home?’ We made 18 to 20 miles a day,” he said.

Patience was also a needed virtue because of the slow pace of travel, and “there ain’t no ‘are we there yet’ talk,” he said.

While the early wagon trains would have support vehicles for eating and animal feed, the original travelers had to be extremely self-sufficient. Those who traveled early in the year would find plenty of grass and material to burn for campfires. Later in the year, feed and fuel, mostly buffalo dung, became more difficult to find.

“They sometimes had to take their livestock 3 or 4 miles from the trail,” he said.

Merchant said his wagon was part of the train until he crossed the Montana border and the weather turned hot. His prized Percheron horses wilted under the heat. He took them home, put his wagon on a trailer and then rode a saddle horse as part of the expedition.

But he ended up finishing the trek with wagon reins in his hand as it pulled into Virginia City. Another reenactor was helping a man put shoes on his oxen and while an ox was being held down on its side, the ox turned his head into the reenactor and broke the man’s ankle. He turned to Merchant to take the injured man’s wagon and team the final leg of the journey.

Floating Box

One thing that Merchant said many people don’t realize about a prairie schooner is that the wagon box just sits on the running gear. It was not attached, just built so that it wouldn’t slide side-to-side on the frame by using blocks of wood to hold it in.

“If it gets in deep water, it just floats off. There is nothing holding this wagon box on this wagon. It just sits there,” he said. “When you read the diaries you see where people lose everything, they are carrying flour, bacon and everything they own and you get in deep water and the wagon box gets wet and tips over and everything heads down the river.”

Merchant said his love for wagons, horses and history can be traced back to his childhood. He grew up on a small Iowa farm.

“My dad drove horses and mules where he grew up. We didn’t really work horses on the farm because that was kind of done by the time I showed up but he always liked horses,” he said. “We didn’t have any money, had this old farm, but we always had horses, my whole life.”

In 1976 for the nation’s Bicentennial, Merchant said a lot of states sent a team and wagon to Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. His father was chosen to drive the team and the wagon from Iowa.

“They left Des Moines and ended up in Valley Forge,” he said.

Reflecting on emigrants to the West, Merchant said most of them in the early years did not have issues with Native Americans. He said it wasn’t until white settlers started coming in numbers, doing random violence to them, taking away their grazing areas and buffalo that they responded.

“Most of it was just people being people,” he said.

Merchant believes the biggest challenge the travelers faced was the weather.

Music Man

In addition to wagons, Merchant likes music.

With his adopted daughters, Rachel and Ana, he has played music from the 1800s era and bluegrass for visitors a few times year at the trails center for the nearly 20 years it’s been open.

Merchant plays guitar and banjo, while his multi-instrumental daughters can play fiddle, mandolin, fill in on guitar or whatever else is needed.

“When we do strictly historic music it is a lot of military tunes and fiddle tunes,” he said. “We would play in (the center) ‘Angeline the Baker,’ it goes real fast. There are some old waltzes, ‘Old Susannah.’”

The musician picked up his banjo, talked about Earl Scruggs, String Bean and Grandpa Jones and then proceeded to play a Grandpa Jones tune called “Eight More Miles to Louisville.”

National Historic Trails Interpretive Center’s Kathleen Hanson said the Merchant family is always appreciated by the center’s visitors — especially for the music the family shares.

“They performed the music (earlier) today and they just did a fantastic job. The visitors loved it. (The Merchants) were ready to engage … and explain a little bit about the music and the instruments,” she said. “It’s wonderful having them up here. A lot of people, they love that kind of music, and they don’t hear it very often.”

Weapons

In addition to the instruments, Merchant enjoys talking about the weapons he has on display at his encampment. These are firearms that might have been carried along the trail. There are two .44-caliber cap-and-ball black powder revolvers the kind that Clint Eastwood carried in the “Outlaw Josey Wales” or Jeff Daniels portraying Col. Joshua Chamberlain in “Gettysburg.”

He also has a .50-caliber black powder Hawken rifle that mountain men, buffalo hunters and “plainsmen” were apt to carry prior to the introduction of breech loading and lever-action weapons.

His bullets, caps used to ignite the black powder, and smaller weapon accessories are carried in his leather “possibles bag.” The small bag is so named because the trail pilgrims would put whatever firearms equipment was “possible” in it.

As Merchant encouraged those around his wagon to keep shaking the cream and the butter started to harden, he went over to a blanket with children’s toys from the era. There were checkers, a doll, pull toy, and a game called “graces” with sticks similar to drumsticks and round hoops.

Graces

He took two sticks and a hoop, put the hoop over the sticks, crossed the sticks in his hands, pointed his arms and sticks at a 45-degree angle and then smoothly uncrossed them while tossing the ring to another player. The game was designed for young girls in the early 1800s and was supposed to help them become more “graceful.”

After the cream was clearly butter, he poured it out into a cheesecloth to rinse off the buttermilk. A little rinse with cold water, the addition of some salt if wanted, and it would be ready for some bread or pancakes.

After more than 20 years of reenacting, Merchant has no plans to stop.

“I just love doing this,” he said. “I like history.”

Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.