Postcard from the Past: Freighting Teams Tangle

Complied by Dick Perue

Collided on bridge: One eight-horse team and four-horse team try to pass and have mix up 

Thus reads the headline and subheads in the Dec. 29, 1904 issue of  The Saratoga Sun. Following is the article which appeared in the weekly newspaper.

Last Thursday afternoon, the freight outfit of L.B. Chase, consisting of an eight-horse team and three wagons, met a four-horse coal team belonging to C.S. Taylor in the middle of the bridge, and as a result, one of the horses belonging to Taylor has a broken leg and a wagon wheel was badly smashed.

The bridge is sufficiently wide to allow two wagons to pass if the teams are driven with lines, but the freight outfits nearly all use jerk lines, and it is a difficult matter to keep a long string of horses hugging one side of the bridge. 

It seems Chase had gotten his teams swung over, but the minute the Taylor wagon, which was driven by Chas. Warnock, passed the leaders then swung back to the middle of the bridge, crowding Warnock into the railing so they were stopped just in time to prevent pushing him clear off the bridge.

The horse with the broken leg was shot.

In the same newspaper, more bad news about freighters was reported. The short item reads:

Mrs. S.J. Ferris killed 

Word was received here by telephone Sunday to the effect Mrs. S.J. Ferris, the woman freighter who left here last fall for Goldfield, Nev., had been killed. 

Nothing definite can be learned concerning the manner of her death, but it is surmised it was due to an accident with her teams.