Houston Land Boat

 

 

 

Search  Inquiry Net

Back ] Home ] Up ]

Prairie Schooner
Houston Land Boat

Scout Books

Site Contents

By Dan Beard

tbp047.gif (16363 bytes)
Fig. 47
The Sam Houston under Full Sail

While we are on the subject of wagons, we must not forget to build one of those weird wagons that are used with sails.  Here, then, is the Sam Houston

Land Boat

This sail wagon (Fig. 47) was named after General Houston because it is described here upon the request of some of the boys down in Texas; and General Houston, you remember, was the great Texan hero. 

The boys from the Lone Star State have written to me and told me about their prospering Forts of the Sons of Daniel Boone down there, "but," said they, "we have no snow or ice here, and we think that you devote too much space to winter sports for Northern boys." Of course, the Northern boys must have their winter sports, and it is the duty of the Founder of the Sons of Daniel Boone to help them out in it.

At the same time he will not neglect all those loyal scouts down South, and so he has devised the Sam Houston land boat for the open country.  This boat will do for Northern roads as well as Southern prairies. 

tbp048.gif (14269 bytes)
Figs. 48 - 50
Diagrams Showing the Construction of a Land Boat

Build your framework as you did for the prairie schooner and the coasting wagon, as shown in Fig. 48, but, unlike Fig. 48, you must make the rear axle much longer than is shown in that diagram, and then the stern of the wagon becomes the bow of the boat (Fig. 49).

Brace the axle as shown in the last diagram, and make a bench as shown in Fig. 51 into which you step the mast.  Make a hole in the reach-board to receive the butt of the mast and one in the bench a little back of it so as to give the mast a rake, as shown in Fig. 52. 

tbp052.gif (5770 bytes)
Fig. 52: 
Sail for Land Boat

Figs. 53, 54, and 55 show two sorts of tillers or steering apparatus, or the boat may be steered with ropes as you do with the coasting cart. E F (Fig. 50) is a block of wood made to fit over the axle to bring the surface up even with X Y of Fig. 48 so that the bench may rest upon an even surface. 

tbp053.gif (4102 bytes)
Figs. 53-55
Details of Steering Apparatus

Fig. 47 shows the Sam Houston under full sail.  The advantage of this craft is that it can make good time on the roads, on the hard, sandy beaches of the ocean just below high tide, and is an excellent traveler on ice or any other hard surface.  If you use bicycle wheels on ball bearings you will, of course, gain greater speed.

Any one of the wagons described are as good for the sunny South as for the frozen North, and most all of the pioneer games hereafter described may be played upon the prairie as well as upon ice and snow.

In the days of Daniel Boone the old backwoodsmen were lucky if they owned a pack-horse and rich if they possessed a prairie schooner, but an automobile would have frightened them more than did the whistle of the first river steamboat that ploughed its way down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers among the shifting sand-bars, "sawyers," and snags.

We, the Sons of Daniel Boone, however, live in a new age, so it is proper and appropriate that we should have all modern out-door devices, and the next chapter tells how to build the latest, up-to-date, cup-winning pushmobile, and after you have built the pushcart land boat and prairie schooner, it will be easy to make the pushmobile, which follows in natural sequence.

The Boy Pioneers

 

 

   

 

 


Additional Information:

Peer- Level Topic Links:
Prairie Schooner ] [ Houston Land Boat ]

Parent- Level Topic Links:
Foreword ] Daniel Boone ] Appleseed Johnny's Day ] Simon Kenton ] Simon Girty ] Audubon's Day ] Form a Boy's Club ] Initiation Boy Pioneers ]

The Inquiry Net Main Topic Links:
 [Outdoor Skills]  [Patrol Method [Old-School]  [Adults [Advancement]  [Ideals]  [Leadership]  [Uniforms]

Search This Site:

Search Amazon.Com:

When you place an order with Amazon.Com using the search box below, a small referral fee is returned to The Inquiry Net to help defer the expense of keeping us online.  Thank you for your consideration!

Search:

Keywords:

Amazon Logo

 

 

Scout Books Trading Post

Dead Bugs, Blow Guns, Sharp Knives, & Snakes:
What More Could A Boy Want?

Old School Scouting:
What to Do, and How to Do It!

To Email me, replace "(at)" below with "@"
Rick(at)Kudu.Net

If you have questions about one of my 2,000 pages here, you must send me the "URL" of the page!
This "URL" is sometimes called the "Address" and it is usually found in a little box near the top of your screen.  Most URLs start with the letters "http://"

The Kudu Net is a backup "mirror" of The Inquiry Net.  

©2003, 2011 The Inquiry Net, http://inquiry.net  In addition to any Copyright still held by the original authors, the Scans, Optical Character Recognition, extensive Editing,  and HTML Coding on this Website are the property of the Webmaster.   My work may be used by individuals for non-commercial, non-web-based activities, such as Scouting, research, teaching, and personal use so long as this copyright statement and a URL to my material is included in the text
The purpose of this Website is to provide access  to hard to find, out-of-print documents.  Much of the content has been edited to be of practical use in today's world and is not intended as historical preservation.   I will be happy to provide scans of specific short passages in the original documents for people involved in academic research.  

 

Last modified: October 15, 2016.