Renowned wagonmaker Doug Hansen leads an interactive exploration of the engineering, operation, and ingenuity of Ketchum’s Lewis Ore Wagons. With the complete hitch on display on Fourth Street outside the Wood River Museum of History and Culture, 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 uphill with food, mule feed, tools, equipment, dynamite, and other provisions needed to sustain isolated mining camps.

The Lewis Ore Wagons are also a testament to Ketchum’s pioneers, the craftsmen who built them, and…