An Up-Close Look at the Ingenuity Behind Ketchum’s Ore Wagons with Wagonmaker Doug Hansen

When you need to restore an antique ore wagon, who do you turn to? Doug Hansen was the obvious choice when the City of Ketchum needed to restore the ore wagons because he is the nation’s premier restorer and builder of historically accurate wagons.

On the Thursday afternoon of Wagon Days weekend, Doug Hansen will lead an interactive exploration of the engineering, operation, and ingenuity of Ketchum’s Lewis Ore Wagons. The complete hitch will be on display on Fourth Street outside the Wood River Museum of History + Culture and Hansen will explain how these massive freighting vehicles were built to meet the demanding conditions of the Wood River Valley and surrounding mining districts. The program offers a rare opportunity to examine the wagons up close alongside the expert entrusted with their repair and restoration work.

Built for H. C. Lewis’s Ketchum Fast Freight operation, the massive freighting wagons served the mining communities of central Idaho. They carried ore from remote mountain mines down to the smelters and returned to the mines with food, mule feed, tools, equipment, dynamite, and other provisions needed to sustain isolated mining camps.

Doug Hansen turned a youthful passion for old-world craftsmanship into an internationally renowned business still rooted on family land in Letcher, S.D. Hansen Wheel & Wagon Shop has restored and built wagons and stagecoaches for museums, theme parks, film and TV productions, collectors, reenactors and people who just plain like to travel by wagon. This talk is presented by the City of Ketchum in coordination with the Wood River Museum of History + Culture.

Registration encouraged, but not required. The event will be held on 4th Street in front of the Wood River Museum, where the Ore Wagons will be staged all day Thursday, September 3.