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Pioneer for a day

In May, ride along on a wagon train celebrating Minnesota's 150th birthday.

If you've ever wondered what it'd be like to ride in a covered wagon, now is the time to find out.

A real wagon train, rolling along on clattering wooden wheels and pulled by horses, is leaving from Cannon Falls on Sunday, May 4, for an eight-day trip to the State Capitol in St. Paul. And you're invited.

It's part of Minnesota's big 150th birthday celebration. The first people to request places in eight wagons get to ride along as the caravan winds from Cannon Falls to Hay Creek, Red Wing and Hastings' Lake Rebecca Park, where the public also can join the wagon train Thursday night for a chuckwagon dinner and bluegrass concert.

The wagon train will head for Inver Grove Community College in Inver Grove Heights Friday and Fort Snelling State Park on Saturday. On Sunday, May 11, escorted by 26 mounted riders plus mounted police, it will wind up through Minnehaha Park, cross the Ford Bridge and go up Cleveland to Summit Avenue, arriving at the State Capitol in time for the day's sesquicentennial festivities.

Organizers, recruited from last year's successful Anoka County sesquicentennial wagon train, are encouraging the public to come out to watch, says videographer Lynn Besch.

"We're really trying to be as authentic as possible,'' she said. "We're trying to emulate what our ancestors experienced.''

People who ride along are asked to wear period clothes, long dresses for women and buckskins or other frontier garb for men. The cost is $25 a day, plus $16 for breakfast and dinners prepared by a chuckwagon chef. Typically, a day rider will go home after dinner, but camping apart from the period wagon-train encampment may be possible.

To request a place, print out the Anoka County Historical Society form and send it in as soon as possible; for details, call 763-323-5789. Tickets also are limited for the May 8 chuckwagon dinner in Hastings, $12. To reserve, call Barry Bernstein at 651-480-6176.

Most of the earliest settlers arrived in Minnesota on steamboats. But after they'd learned where land was available, they'd load their possessions in a wagon and travel farther west. Other families, like that of Laura Ingalls Wilder, came later from Wisconsin, looking for better and cheaper land.

For details about the many other sesquicentennial events, check www.mn150years.org.

Last updated on April 17, 2008