The Remington Carriage Museum is located in Cardston, Alberta, Canada. Opened in 1993, and the largest of its kind in the world[citation needed], the Remington Carriage Museum displays more than 240 carriages.
Rated "The Best Indoor Attraction in Canada" four times by Attractions Canada, the 64,000sqft (5,900m2). museum has a working stable, carriage rides, video displays, wedding rooms, an 80-seat theatre, Victorian gift shop and restaurant.
Carriage history
The main exhibit gallery at the museum is arranged in a series of vignettes. Each tells a story of late 19th and early 20th century North American society and the horse-drawn vehicles that were used. In each area, the coaches carts and sleighs displayed are accompanied by panels providing information with hundreds of archival photographs.
In the Carriage Preservation Workshop, the public is invited to watch expert technicians carry out the art of blacksmithing, wheelwrighting, woodworking, metalworking and finishing.
An elegant outdoor equestrian eventing program is also featured at the museum.
Don Remington (1914–1987), the man behind the Remington Museum, was a land owner, cattle rancher, developer, bridge builder and philanthropist.
For 35 years, Don Remington and his wife Afton travelled across North America, Britain and the world to obtain then ship carriages back to restore.
Don Remington himself was a coach-builder, carriage restorer and coach, carriage and sleigh historian and it is with first-hand knowledge that he restored the carriages in his collection. Many of the carriages in the Remington Museum were used in his lifetime.
Remington served on the Board of Directors for the American Carriage Association, of which he was a lifetime member.
Royalty, presidents and the Remington collection
Remington carriages have transported kings, queens, princes with their princesses, dukes and duchesses, earls, countesses, marquesses, lords and ladies, presidents and world heads of state. Celebrities worldwide have found themselves behind the reins of a Remington carriage. Remington Carriages were a part of the world-famous Calgary Stampede and the 1988 Winter Olympic Games. Calgary Heritage Park Days and Spruce Meadows International Equestrian Horse Shows often feature the Remington collection. Remington carriages have attended hundreds of parades worldwide.
Queen Elizabeth II of Canada along with her husband Prince Philip and her son Prince Charles rode in a Remington landau carriage whilst visiting Canada in 1973 and again whilst visiting in 1980.
The Studebaker Company made a landau carriage for Ulysses S. Grant while he was president of the United States in 1869 - 1877. This carriage is featured in the Remington Museum.
Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt owned an original Royal Hansom Cab 1910, located at the Remington Carriage Museum. Don Remington purchased the Vanderbilt cab in New York, then stabilized the carriage and maintained its original Vanderbilt logo, finishes and trimmings. The Royal Hansom Cab frequented the cobbled streets of London, Paris and New York City between 1870 and 1930, prior to the automobile taxis.
The Remington Barouche carried numerous dignitaries, including Prince Philip and Prince Andrew, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, Alberta premiers Ralph Klein and Peter Lougheed, Governor General of Canada Madame Sauve', Mormon President Kimball & President Benson of the LDS Church.
In the early 1970s, while Don Remington was visiting England, he came across a man named Colonel Graville Williams who sold him the carriage BBreak by Holland & Holland, London.
The popular Fox television show The Simpsons episode 17 of the 17th season, "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bangalore", features sisters Patty and Selma kidnapping Richard Dean Anderson, the actor who played action hero MacGyver. Selma and Patty show Dean slides of their summer vacation, including various carriages from the Remington Museum with a front image of Patty and Selma standing next to a bronze statue of the museum's visionary, Don Remington.
Hollywood has made the covered wagon and stagecoach icons of the idealized Old West, and the Remington Carriage Museum has both, including coaches used in past and present Hollywood productions. Visitors can climb aboard the stagecoach used by Jackie Chan in Disney's Shanghai Noon and by Tom Selleck in Crossfire Trail.
The Fay Wray Fountain Memorial is located one block from the Remington Carriage Museum. Fay Wray rose to fame as the dame in distress in the immortal 1933 film King Kong. When Fay Wray returned to Cardston in 1967, she rode in a Remington Concord Stagecoach.[1] Cowboy Country Television profiled Don Remington, season 4 episode 12.
Horses and The Remington Collection
The story of 19th century transportation would be incomplete without the horse, and the museum's herd of Clydesdales, Quarter Horses and Canadians are a major feature of daily programs. An elegant equestrian eventing program is also featured at the museum, demonstrating the skill and protocol of competitive driving horses in harness. Each horse breed is selected to support the ride program at the museum.
The Clydesdale breed is a widely recognized draft horse used in teams of two, three or four to pull large vehicles seating up to 18 passengers. This breed is known famously as the Budweiser Clydesdale horses.
The American Quarter Horse is bred for speed and for distance, up to a quarter mile, and they are well suited to pulling wagons, buggies and sleighs.
The Canadian Horse was bred from horses shipped to Quebec from France in 1665. Their stamina and quiet temperament make this breed a perfect choice for carriage work.
Pairs of Quarter Horses and Canadians are used at the museum to pull smaller carriages up to six people.
Tack is also an important part of the carriage, Don Remington made thousands of unique one of a kind tack...
The Remington Carriage Museum is part of a network of historic sites and museums in Alberta which include Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the Frank Slide Centre. The museum is open year-round, 7 days a week. Cardston is also home to the first Mormon LDS temple built outside the United States.
Vina Fay Wray was a Canadian-American actress best known for starring as Ann Darrow in the 1933 film King Kong. Through an acting career that spanned nearly six decades, Wray attained international recognition as an actress in horror films. She has been dubbed one of the early "scream queens".
A cart or dray is a vehicle designed for transport, using two wheels and normally pulled by one or a pair of draught animals. A handcart is pulled or pushed by one or more people.
A stagecoach is a four-wheeled public transport coach used to carry paying passengers and light packages on journeys long enough to need a change of horses. It is strongly sprung and generally drawn by four horses although some versions are drawn by six horses.
A carriage is a private four-wheeled vehicle for people and is most commonly horse-drawn. Second-hand private carriages were common public transport, the equivalent of modern cars used as taxis. Carriage suspensions are by leather strapping and, on those made in recent centuries, steel springs. Two-wheeled carriages are informal and usually owner-driven.
A hackney or hackney carriage is a carriage or car for hire. A hackney of a more expensive or high class was called a remise. A symbol of London and Britain, the black taxi is a common sight on the streets of the UK. The hackney carriages carry a roof sign TAXI that can be illuminated at night to indicate their availability for passengers.
The hansom cab is a kind of horse-drawn carriage designed and patented in 1834 by Joseph Hansom, an architect from York. The vehicle was developed and tested by Hansom in Hinckley, Leicestershire, England. Originally called the Hansom safety cab, it was designed to combine speed with safety, with a low centre of gravity for safe cornering. Hansom's original design was modified by John Chapman and several others to improve its practicability, but retained Hansom's name.
The Clydesdale is a Scottish breed of draught horse. It is named for its area of origin, the Clydesdale or valley of the River Clyde, much of which is within the county of Lanarkshire.
Cardston is a town in Alberta, Canada. It was first settled in 1887 by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who travelled from Utah, via the Macleod-Benton Trail, to present-day Alberta in one of the century's last wagon migrations. The founder of the town was Charles Ora Card. The combined church and school was completed by January 29 the year following their arrival.
George Monroe Woolf, nicknamed "The Iceman", was a Canadian thoroughbred race horse jockey. An annual jockey's award given by the United States Jockeys' Guild is named in his honor. He became known for riding the people's champion Seabiscuit to victories in 1938.
The Transportation coils series is a set of definitive stamps issued by the United States Postal Service between 1981 and 1995. Officially dubbed the "Transportation Issue" or "Transportation Series", they have come to be called the "transportation coils" because all of the denominations were issued in coil stamp format. All values except three were printed by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.
“Kiss Kiss, Bang Bangalore” is the seventeenth episode of the seventeenth season of the American animated television series The Simpsons. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on April 9, 2006. Dan Castellaneta & Deb Lacusta were nominated for a Writers Guild of America Award for Outstanding Writing in Animation at the 59th Writers Guild of America Awards for their script to this episode.
A horse-drawn vehicle is a mechanized piece of equipment pulled by one horse or by a team of horses. These vehicles typically had two or four wheels and were used to carry passengers and/or a load. They were once common worldwide, but they have mostly been replaced by automobiles and other forms of self-propelled transport.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to transport:
Provincial historic sites of Alberta are museums and historic sites run by the Government of Alberta.
A coach is a large, closed, four-wheeled, passenger-carrying vehicle or carriage usually drawn by two or more horses controlled by a coachman, a postilion, or both. A coach has doors in its sides and a front and a back seat inside. The driver has a raised seat in front of the carriage to allow better vision. It is often called a box, box seat, or coach box. There are many of types of coaches depending on the vehicle's purpose.
The Horseshoe Barn and Horseshoe Barn Annex are two exhibit buildings located at Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont. Both buildings exhibit a variety of horse-drawn vehicles, including carriages, trade wagons, stagecoaches, and sleighs.
Royal and viceroyal transport in Canada have included a variety of vehicles generally used for royal tours in Canada, and viceregal official and ceremonial duties in both the provincial and the federal spheres. The technology employed has mirrored the development of transportation since the late 17th century, when the first members of the Royal Family ventured from Great Britain to British North America. As the Canadian Royal Family is not predominantly resident in the country, those that belong to it have generally always had to make a trans-Atlantic crossing before switching to alternate over-land, water, or air transportation once in Canada.
The Long Island Museum of American Art, History, and Carriages, known as the Long Island Museum (LIM), is a nine-acre museum located in Stony Brook, New York. The LIM serves the Long Island community by preserving and displaying its collection of art, historical artifacts, and carriages; providing educational and public programming; and collaborating with a variety of other arts and cultural organizations.
Morris & Stone, Ltd., which later changed its name to the more well-known Budgie Toys, was a British die-cast toy distributor turned manufacturer, based in London. The company first specialised in horse-drawn carriages and coaches. It later made a wide variety of miniature cars and trucks.
The Concord coach is a type of horse-drawn coach, often used as stagecoaches, mailcoaches, and hotel coaches. The term was first used for the coaches built by coach-builder J. Stephen Abbot and wheelwright Lewis Downing of the Abbot-Downing Company in Concord, New Hampshire, but later to be sometimes used generically. Like their predecessors, the Concords employed a style of suspension and construction particularly suited to North America's early 19th century roads. Leather thoroughbraces suspend passengers who are in constant motion while the coach is moving. The swaying is accepted by passengers for the shock absorbing action of the leather straps and for the way the special motion eases the coach over very rough patches of roadway. This suspension, which was developed by Philip de Chiese in the 17th century, was long replaced by steel springs in England.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
