Step One
We build by hand.
White-oak frame, forged-iron banding, hand-stitched leather seating. No factory line. No shortcuts. The whole wagon takes about six months and the marks of the tools are intentional.
Healin' Wheels · Texas · Est. 2025
Every body has a seat.
At the Houston Rodeo — and beyond.
A Texas non-profit founded by master wagon-maker William “Kelly” Hicks— building a fleet of fully accessible covered wagons, by hand, the old way. Big enough for ten. Wheelchair users and their families included.
Kelly HicksFounder & Master Wagon Maker
Conestoga wagon · Vega, Texas · the heritage form we build
Midway, TexasMade by hand. Built for ten. Every body gets a seat.
✦The Work✦
Heritage wagons, built honestly. Then welcomed home.
Each wagon starts as raw white oak in Kelly's barn. By the time it leaves, it's a hand-tooled vehicle for community — and there's a seat saved for everyone.
Step Two
Access is in the wood.
Every wagon has two wheelchair tie-downs and an integrated ramp built into the rear gate — not a clinical add-on, but the same hand-tooled white oak as the rest of the bed.
Step Three
It rolls into communities.
From the Houston Rodeo to small-town parades. Families ride together. Volunteers drive. Donors keep the workshop running. The wagon does what wagons have always done.
✦From the Library✦
Long reads from the workshop.
The shop publishes essays the way it publishes wagons — slowly, by hand, in long form. Three to start with.
- A Feature · 22 minThe Hicks LineageA family history of the wheel, traced across 5,500 years from Sumerian Ur to Madison County, Texas. Eleven eras, one trade.
- An Essay · 9 minWhy accessibility belongs in the woodHeritage wagons designed wheelchair-accessible from the frame up. The dignity problem with retrofit lifts, the practice of universal design, the difference between built-in and bolted-on.
- An Essay · 12 minThe lost art of wagon makingFewer than a dozen working wheelwrights left in America. What is at risk if the craft goes — and what it takes to keep it rolling.
The Ask
The craft is nearly gone. We can keep it rolling.
Sponsoring a build funds six months of master craftsmanship — and a generation of community rides.