WordNet
n. a large wagon with broad wheels and an arched canvas top; used by the United States pioneers to cross the prairies in the 19th century [syn: Conestoga wagon, Conestoga, prairie wagon, prairie schooner]
Wikipedia
The covered wagon was long the dominant form of transport in pre-industrial America. With roots in the heavy Conestoga wagon developed for the rough, undeveloped roads and paths of the colonial East, the covered wagon spread west with American migration. Heavily relied upon along such travel routes as the Great Wagon Road and the Santa Fe and Oregon Trails, it carried settlers seeking land, gold, and new futures ever further west.
With its ubiquitous exposure in 20th century media, the covered wagon grew to become an icon of the American West. The fanciful nickname Prairie Schooner and romantic depiction in wagon trains only served to embellish the legend.
Covered Wagon, also known as Oregon Trail Immigrants Memorial and Pioneer Family, is an outdoor 1934 white marble sculpture by Leo Friedlander installed outside the Oregon State Capitol in Salem, Oregon, United States.
Usage examples of "covered wagon".
Barla climbed into the rear of the hide-covered wagon, took the sleeping Nexa from Aramina, the bundle from Pell, and gestured the children to the fore where Dowell was untying ring reins from the tether stone.
Three days later, after dark, a hooped and canvas-covered wagon lumbered onto the tober and the same old man clambered down from the driver's seat.
But after a time, reasoning that anything he couldn't identify might be dangerous, he called down into the covered wagon bed.
Cerryl watched for a moment, then waited for a canvas-covered wagon heading out of Fairhaven to pass before crossing the square.
A long canvas-covered wagon creaked northward, pulled by a four-horse team.
Minerva, it was lucky for me, lucky for Dora, that I was on my sixth pioneering venture and that I had planned how to load spaceships many years before I ever loaded a covered wagon-for the principles are the same.
Looking around the timbered bank, Effie saw two men standing by a covered wagon hitched to a pair of matched ponies.
The driver of a red-lacquered coach with the moneylenders' gold coins and open hand on the door shook his whip at the driver of a canvas-covered wagon whose team had become entangled with the coach's, the pan- filling the street with curses.
The driver of a red-lacquered coach with the moneylenders' gold coins and open hand on the door shook his whip at the driver of a canvas-covered wagon whose team had become entangled with the coach's, the man filling the street with curses.
The call came from a short distance down the alley, where a round-faced Mar with a waxed mustache sat in the driver's seat of a large covered wagon.