Dusting Off Some Local History: “Dashing Through the Snow”

By Greg Kocken, Archivist, UW-Eau Claire, Kockeng@uwec.edu

This image, captured by amateur photographer Daniel Bastian Nelson, shows a cutter style sleigh resting in an Eau Claire neighborhood, ca. 1900. From the Daniel Nelson Collection, UWEC Archives. 

Long-range weather forecasts for the Chippewa Valley suggest our winter will feature a blanket of white snow. With any luck, by the time you read this, the Chippewa Valley will be experiencing a completely average winter season. Average and ordinary would be a welcome sight when compared to the abnormal winter we all experienced in 2023-2024. Of course, while a white blanket of snow may be a beautiful sight it is not without those typical consternations: driving on ice and snow, shoveling, and the bitter cold of the season. While sorting through some photographs from the late 1800s and early 1900s for a class project at UW-Eau Claire, I paused after viewing an image of a sleigh. A century ago, it was a common sight to see folks “dashing through the snow” in horse-drawn sleighs, just like in the classic holiday tune Jingle Bells. The open sleigh, a relic of a bygone era, is a rare sight today that fascinates me when I see one in an old photograph.

Sleighs have a long history going all the way back to the ancient Egyptians who are believed to have used a form of sleigh to haul blocks while constructing the pyramids. Logging camps, which dotted the Northwoods in winter during the second half of the nineteenth century, would have used large sleighs led by teams of horses to pull cut lumber out of the woods. Ordinary people would have also used sleighs in winter for personal transportation. Around 1800 a new form of sleigh, known as the cutter, was developed in New England. The cutter, designed to be pulled by one or two horses, was lightweight and featured a carriage for one or two people. Cutters were widely adopted for winter use in the 1800s and early 1900s.

Lumberman William Irvine and his daughter Ruth are seen here in a cutter drawn by two horses outside his Chippewa Falls home. From the AA Bish Collection, UWEC Archives.

In the late 1860s a carriage manufacturer, Bonell Brothers (later known as Bonell and Son) emerged as leading a carriage and sleigh manufacturer in the Chippewa Valley. Although very little information about the company exists, at their height they were shipping carriages across the country. Bonell likely also manufactured the cutter style sleighs that are seen in many historic local photographs. Ultimately, advancements in automobile design and improvements to our local and national transportation infrastructure in the 20th century led to the demise of sleighs for everyday use. Still, the nostalgia of the horse drawn sleigh remains fixed in our consciousness as a romanticized vision of our region’s past.

Is there a local history mystery or topic you want to know more about? Do you have a suggestion for an upcoming column of “Dusting Off?” Please contact Greg at the UW-Eau Claire archives. He would love to hear from you.