Stage One
Wood selection & the frame.
Quartersawn white oak from a mill near Tyler. The wagon bed is laid out square, mortise-and-tenon joints cut by hand. Pegged, not bolted.
The Craft · Texas Wagon Making
How a Texas wheelwright still builds wagons by hand.
Healin' Wheels is one of the last working wagon-making shops in America — and the only one in Texas building heritage wagons that are wheelchair-accessible from the frame up. Here's what the craft is, why it's nearly gone, and how a wagon is built in our barn outside Midway.
A wheelwright works in wood, iron, and leather at once.
A wagon-maker — sometimes still called a wheelwright or wheel rite— is a craftsperson who can shape a wagon wheel from raw white oak, forge iron banding for the rim, build the bed and running gear, and stitch the leather. The trade combines three crafts in one shop: woodwright, blacksmith, and saddler.
For two centuries, every American family with land had access to a wagon-maker. By the early twentieth century, internal combustion did most of the trade in. Today fewer than a dozen working wagon-makers remain in the United States, and they are mostly in their seventies.
William “Kelly” Hicks is one of them. He has worked white oak with steam, forged iron banding on the anvil, and laid down true wagon-wheel rims for decades in East Texas.
Wheelwrights at the wheel · archival photograph · Sam Hood
Historic Conestoga · Library of Congress · early 1900sConestoga wagons, prairie schooners, and custom heritage builds.
The wagons we build belong to a family of forms that rolled across this country for two hundred years — and across Texas in particular.
Conestoga wagonsare the heavy freight wagon that opened the American frontier — broad, boat-bottomed bed, canvas top hooped over white-oak ribs, iron-banded wheels. We build a Conestoga-style heritage wagon for parades, rodeos, and ranch events.
Prairie schoonersare the lighter cousin — the emigrant wagon, drawn by oxen or a single team, with a higher-set bed. Faster to build, easier to drive.
Custom heritage builds are the third leg of the shop. Ranches, museums, and event venues commission wagons for working use or display, often with a brand burned into the rear gate.
✦The Build✦
Six months from raw oak to first ride.
Every Healin' Wheels wagon takes about six months of master craftsmanship. Here's the sequence, in plain order.
Stage Two
The wheels.
Hub turned on the lathe; spokes shaped and driven into the hub; the felloes (the wooden segments of the rim) glued and pinned. Dished slightly outward so the wheel carries load truer on a crowned road.
Stage Three
Forging the iron tire.
The iron banding is heated on the forge, stretched, and dropped onto the wooden wheel. Quenched in the slack tub, the iron shrinks tight against the felloes. That “ringing” is a wagon-maker's test for a good wheel.
Stage Four
Leather, canvas, and the running gear.
Bench leather hand-cut and stitched. White-oak hoops bent for the canvas top. Axles, brakes, and the running gear assembled. The wagon is now a rolling object.
Stage Five
Accessibility, in the wood.
Two wheelchair tie-downs are integrated into the bed. The rear gate is rebuilt as a low-angle ramp in the same white oak. A low-step entry is cut into both sides for cane and walker users.
Stage Six
Finish & first ride.
Oiled. Branded. Rolled out the shop doors at sunrise. The wagon does what wagons have always done — carry people who want to ride together.
Hire the Workshop
Looking for a custom wagon, a wheel rebuild, or a rodeo partner?
The workshop intends to take a small number of custom builds and partner events each year once the first wagons are complete. Nothing is currently for sale; this is a call for early conversations only. Every project starts with a phone call about what the wagon is for and who's going to ride in it.
Further Reading
Kindred shops, archives, and partners.
Honest links to the public institutions that document American wagon making and the events our wagons serve.
- Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo— The flagship event our accessible wagons serve.
- Texas Folklife— Stewards of traditional Texas craft and folkways.
- Texas Historical Commission— The state body for Texas heritage and traditional trades.
- Conestoga wagons · Library of Congress— Public-domain archive of historical American wagon photography.
- National Museum of American History— Holds the mid-19th-century Conestoga we draw from as a reference.