Stop 19 – Other Apparatus of the 1800s

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Through the second half of the eighteen hundreds, each company kept adding and replacing equipment: hand pumpers, hose carts, and more. Most of it was thrown out when it wore out. The last horse-drawn rig, a combination chemical and hose wagon, was bought in nineteen-oh-one. Within the next twenty years, the department would be fully motorized.

The ladder wagon here came to Nebraska City in eighteen sixty-eight, built by the Fire Extinguisher Company of Chicago. It carried an extension ladder, a straight ladder, four buckets, a pike pole, soda-acid extinguishers, and axes. It's the oldest piece of apparatus in the museum.

In the photo of it on parade in the nineteen-twenties, look for the sign that reads eighteen sixty-five. That marks the last reorganization of the Otoe Hook and Ladder Company.