Sheepwagon: Home on the Range

Sheepwagon: Home on the Range

By Nancy Weidel

For so long, the sheepwagon was such a common sight on the western landscape that it has been overlooked as an important part of the region’s culture. Other than a few articles about the quaint sheepwagon or the lonely life of the rapidly disappearing sheepherder, no definitive history of the western sheep business has been written since 1948.

This photo-intensive book gives the history of the sheepwagon and the surrounding sheep business. Here are chapters on the early days of Western sheep-raising; the origins and manufacturing of sheepwagons; traditional sheepherders: their superstitions, customs and pastimes; women and families who lived in sheepwagons; the Basque influence; and modern-day herders, sheepwagons, and restorers.

Author Weidel spent years interviewing sheepmen and women, sheepherders, wagon builders, and experts for this, the only book on the fascinating “first mobile home.”

• 0-931271-64-9 • trade paper • index • bibliography • 8 x 10 • 192 pp • $19.95 ORDER NOW

Sheepwagon: Home on the Range

By Nancy Weidel

“To know more about the sheep raising traditions in the West, particularly in Wyoming, this book is a valuable information source. …I highly recommend this book.”
•• Candy Moulton, Fence Post

Nancy Weidel

Nancy Weidel is fascinated with sheepwagons-which at first seems a little unusual for a woman who grew up in the suburbs of Delaware.

After working for five years as waitress, she went back to school to earn a degree in American History at the University of Delaware. Then came a stint in the business world in Wilmington before she returned to school for an M.A. in History. Then, like many adventurers before her, she packed up and headed West.

Since 1992 she has been employed in various capacities by the Wyoming State Historic Preservation Office.

She is the author of The Pictorial History of Cheyenne 1887-1917 and a postcard edition of early Cheyenne.

She continues her interest in everything to do with sheepwagons.