A prairie schooner was a type of covered wagon used by American pioneers traveling west across the Great Plains in the 1800s. These wagons got their poetic name because when settlers saw long lines of them moving across the flat grasslands, their white canvas covers billowing in the wind looked like sailing ships crossing an ocean of grass.

Prairie schooners were smaller and lighter than the famous Conestoga wagons used in the East. A typical prairie schooner measured about 10 feet long and 4 feet wide and was pulled by oxen, mules, or horses. The white canvas cover stretched over wooden hoops protected families and their belongings from sun, rain, and dust during the months-long journey west.

These wagons carried everything a family needed to start a new life: tools, seeds, furniture, food, and personal belongings. But they couldn't carry much weight, so families had to make hard choices about what to bring. Along the trails west, you can still find abandoned furniture and possessions that families had to leave behind when their wagons became too heavy.

Tens of thousands of prairie schooners crossed the plains on routes like the Oregon Trail and California Trail between the 1840s and 1860s, carrying settlers toward new opportunities and adventures in the American West.