Hay Carriers, Pulleys Fill Unique Museum

Enlarge Image Image Gallery Many hay carriers boasted intricate detail, like this Illinois-made piece displayed at Doug de Shazer’s Lewis & Clark Pulley Museum in Crofton, Neb. Courtesy Doug de Shazer

Doug de Shazer is among a handful of collectors gathering what’s left of these historic trappings. His enthusiasm for antique hay tools, and desire to educate others about them, led him to create the Lewis & Clark Pulley Museum on his property near Crofton just south of the Nebraska/South Dakota border.

The main focus of his collection is hay carriers and barn pulleys, commonly manufactured from the 1860s to the 1950s. A century ago, nearly every farm operation revolved around the barn. Animals were housed, fed, milked and otherwise cared for in what was generally the largest structure on the farm. Haymows were the primary storehouse for grain and loose stacks of prairie hay harvested every year. Hay carriers were used to move loads of hay (held by a sling or fork) from a wagon into the barn for storage. The carriers traveled along track: first wood beams and then, beginning in the 1890s, steel rail. And every carrier depended on a pulley to raise and lower the load.

The advent of mechanized farm equipment, like tractors, balers and conveyor systems, has made those early tools obsolete. “A lot of them have already been buried in a pile, along with the barns they were used in,” Doug says. “But many are still intact in the barns that remain and they’ve been pretty much unnoticed all these years.”

The U.S. Patent Office offers another solid resource for the collector. As Doug began searching for information on hay carriers and pulleys, through patent searches and other study, he learned that some 200 U.S. manufacturers produced as many as 500 different hay carriers. “All of these items are heavy and shipping them very far would have been fairly costly,” he explains. “That’s why so many companies made them. When they were shipped, they were usually carried by train because of the weight involved.”