Wagon-Making in the United States: During the Late-19th Through Mid-20th Centuries -- A Study of the Gruber Wagon Works at Mt Pleasant, Pennsylvania - Softcover

Wagon-Making in the United States . . . is perhaps the best available description of the tools, materials, technology, and process of wagon-making in the US during the late pre-automotive period. The featured centerpiece of this book is a masters thesis completed in 1968 at Millersville College (now University), Millersville, Pennsylvania, by Paul A. Kube. Titled “A Study of the Gruber Wagon Works at Mt. Pleasant, Pennsylvania,” this thesis describes the content, structure, and functioning of the Gruber Wagon Works as that business existed in the middle part of the 20th century – a rare late-surviving representative of an industry that had, at one time, been essential to the transportation needs of the agrarian and early industrial national economy. Contributions by Clayton E. Ray and Cathy L. Wegener provide an introduction to the significance of the Kube thesis, a brief history of wagon-making in the United States, a review of the relocation and management of the Gruber Wagon Works as an interpretive center during and after the mid-1970s, a compilation of surviving production records of the Gruber Works, and a biographical sketch of Paul Kube.

In 1885, after twenty-five years of wagon-making experience, Franklin Henry Gruber established the Gruber Wagon Works when he and his sons started making wagons in their new shop along Licking Creek in Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania. The business continued to make wagons and other wooden conveyances until 1956, and to repair those products through 1971. Three years before the company closed its doors, Paul A. Kube, retired from the US Navy and then teaching high school in Boyertown, Pennsylvania, completed his Masters thesis on the content, structure, and functioning of the Gruber Wagon Works. Through the fortuitous convergence of this late-surviving wagon-making business and the skills of a mature graduate student, we have what is considered by many to be the best description of the wagon-making trade in the United States during the late-19th through mid-20th centuries. In recognition of the historical and technological importance of the Gruber Wagon Works, the building and its contents were relocated by the US Army Corps of Engineers in 1976 from Mount Pleasant to their final location at the Berks County Heritage Center, near Reading, Pennsylvania.