1830 Conestoga Wagon rolls through York to new home at York History Center from Ag Museum

A Conestoga Wagon, built around 1830, rolled south on Pershing Avenue in York on Thursday, Feb. 8 on its way to the new York County History Center, leaving the Agricultural & Industrial Museum.

The Conestoga Wagon “was the freight truck of the early 1800s,”  Dan Fink, vice president of marketing and public relations for the center, said during the move.

The Conestoga wagon passes the Golden Plough Tavern at Market and Pershing.

This particular wagon was owned by the Greist family of York Springs and was made in Lancaster County. It later came into possession of Mahlon Haines, of shoe fame, who used it to carry people around in it. In the late 1950s, it was donated by Haines to what is now the York County History Center, Fink said.

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Once wearing a brighter blue and red, Conestogas like this one carried freight from Philadelphia and Baltimore and throughout York County. They were pulled by six horses until rail transport became the long-distance carrier of choice in the 1800s. Its bowed shape was designed to keep barrels inside and centered, Fink added. It wasn’t designed to carry people as it served the purpose of a trailer in a modern tractor-trailer combination.

Using four dollies to roll and a forklift to rise, Kinsley Construction workers used a steel bracing under the axles so the almost two-century-old mechanical parts of the vehicle wouldn’t be rolling.

The complete unit was moved along Pershing Avenue by flatbed trailer pulled by a pickup truck to the new location where the process was reversed.

The new 52,000-square-foot museum in the former Met-Ed steam plant will open to the public in the summer of 2024. The History Center relocated from its current home on East Market Street, where it has been since 1955. Exhibits will be consolidated into the new building from multiple locations.

More inside: York County History Center as construction looked in Summer 2023.

This article originally appeared on York Daily Record: 1830 Conestoga Wagon rolls through York to new home at York History Center from Ag Museum