Fresno operator did two-man job alone

From our January 2013 issue

By Mathew Wozniak – Grande Prairie, Alta.

When I was a Grade 3 student at Wanham, Alta., School in 1935, the Department of Highways erected a bridge about 70-feet long on the Burnt River. Our teacher, Ms. Ramsey, decided we should all see it and the whole class walked the six miles to the work site.

A man was making the approach on the west side with four horses and a fresno. Normally, it takes two men, one to drive the horses while the other operates the fresno. This man drove the horses by verbal commands like “gee” and “haw” and operated the fresno by himself.

A fresno is about four feet wide and about a foot deep. It had a long handle that he would hold to fill it with dirt and then lift the handle to dump the dirt. It required many trips to make a cubic yard so was a slow process.

First he’d plow the ground with a walking plow so the dirt was soft. As the horses turned, he’d have to slide the fresno sideways to get close to the abutment. At that time, there was about six feet of abutment left above where he was putting dirt. It would take a long time and he wasn’t getting much more than a dollar a day.

Roads not much more than trails

Roads weren’t much more than trails and had very few culverts, so after a rain and in the spring there were mud holes in every low place. Roads weren’t snow plowed so we didn’t drive all winter.

In 1952, our family decided to go the 12 miles west to Wanham because on Saturday night they had a movie and the stores were open until nine. We didn’t do so well. At midnight, we’d only made it about five miles from home. We were still trying to get out of a mud hole.


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