South Peace Historical Society

    • Home
    • About / Contact Us
    • About Dorthea Horton
    • About This Collection
    • Bibliography
    • Brief History of the Peace
    • Credits
    • South Peace Historical Society Archives (External Link)
  • Table of Contents

    • Part 1: First Nations of the Peace River Region
    • Part 2: The Fur Trade Era
    • Part 3: Transportation and Communication
    • Part 4: Old Timers and the Price of Land
    • Part 5: Dawson Creek: The Story of the Community
    • Part 6: Mysteries, Adventures and Indian Legends
    • Part 7: Arts, Crafts and Recreation
    • Part 8: Agriculture
    • Part 9: Church Histories
    • Part 10: Schools
    • Part 11: Health Care
    • Part 12: Industries and Enterprises
    • Part 13: Policing the Peace
    • Part 14: Pouce Coupe, Rolla, and Other South Peace Communities
    • Part 15: Chetwynd and the Fort St. John Area
    • Part 16: The Alberta Peace
    • Part 17: Natural History of the Peace River Region
    • Part 18: Interviews with Old Timers
    • Part 19: Remembering Our Veterans

  •  

03-031: The Caboose

By Dorthea Calverley
Until local roads were improved in the early 1950’s to allow school buses to bring children to a central school, the caboose was a familiar sight in front of any place of business in winter. All stores had hitching rails. As long as you fed the living “engine” it would pull the vehicle through places no motor vehicle could get through.

Local roads — where there were any — were notorious for mud-holes or snow banks. Most of them had been built by local farmers working out their taxes. The roadbed was no wider than needed for two vehicles to pass with care. The least amount of dirt to be moved spread the little money that was available to the greatest possible length. Shoulders were missing — the grade dropped almost perpendicularly to the ditch. Horse drawn vehicles could simply take to the fields and go around.

In winter some form of protection was necessary for freighters or settlers when most travel was done over the muskegs. The caboose was nothing new. The first horses and oxen over any pioneer road pulled them. They came in all forms and sizes. A cabin built over sleigh runners served the purpose. Since drivers needn’t watch traffic from side roads, no windows were necessary nor were they desirable. A hole in front to peer through with another smaller one to pass the reins through to drive was sufficient.

A newcomer to the country might be startled to see a row of these often rough and unwieldy “winter homes” parked along the streets, each one with a stovepipe through the roof, smoking cozily. It indicated that a supply of fuel was ready to feed a small stove. There was probably a bunk where the driver slept if on an overnight trip. Certainly there was storage for any perishable foods that came along, if the caboose were to be overnight on the road.

The caboose saved many a man and his family from severe frostbite or even death on the road when temperatures went down below 400 or 500 especially in a wind. Horses could not work then because their lungs would freeze. But teamsters knew when to stop to blanket the beasts and let them turn their heads away from the wind. Oats and some hay from inside the caboose or from a rack outside enabled them to keep up body temperature.

The Athabasca, Peace River and Edson Trails saw numberless cabooses. Whole families lived in them for a month or six weeks or more. Babies were born in these pioneer “campers” on occasion. Many a poker game went on all night while the tiny stove was stoked, and the horses or oxen fed and rested. Many children drove themselves to the country schoolhouses, which all had stables as part of the facilities.

Until the Second World War, mail day in Dawson Creek and Pouce Coupe was on a Friday. People arrived from as far away as Hudson’s Hope and Rose Prairie –occasionally even from Fort Nelson three hundred miles north.

Folks usually killed several birds with one stone by bringing in grain to sell, picking up freight and mail and replenishing supplies. The trip gave the women-folk a chance to visit and ward off cabin fever from too much isolation, and perhaps attend the Friday night movie, no matter how bad the weather.

The caboose had one advantage over the trucks and cars which replaced them almost completely by the 1940’s — if the driver fell asleep from boredom, or from an overdose of the only tranquilizer in common use in that day, the horses would take the outfit safely home.

« 03-030: The Fort Nelson Trial & “E.J.” Spinney

03-032: The Indian Dugout »

© 2023 South Peace Historical Society. All Rights Reserved.