Field Trip: Journey to Work (San Mateo County History Museum)

Credit: San Mateo County History Museum

Where: San Mateo County History Museum (2200 Broadway, Redwood City, CA 94063)
When : During the school year
Who   : 1st-3rd graders recommended
Cost   : $110 for a group, max 30 students per group

Last year, we had come across this field trip on the San Mateo County History Museum's list of school programs, and thought it would be a fun trip for the younger students in our group. Booking is straight forward - if you sign up for their educators' mailing list, you will be informed when they begin accepting bookings (April 15 this year) and you can pay online. 

As in our last field trip, the museum scheduled our field trip to begin at 9:30am, before its official opening time of 10:00am. Once inside, we sat down and went over some guidelines for understanding what a museum was, and the artifacts unique to this one. Throughout the museum, there are signs specifying which may be touched, and which may not. This is one area we are thankful to be a homeschooling group - with all the parents present, we tend to have a good chaperone to student ratio.  

"Journey to Work" is a permanent exhibit at the museum. When you enter through the doorway across from the gift shop, you step back into time to the 1850s. Immediately, you see a beautiful display of saddles, as a reminder of the integral role the horse played in the West.

Turning the corner, you see a gleaming stagecoach, considered the bus of the 1850s. 

The docent introduced terms like the whip (driver), and riding shotgun (guard). An interesting difference from today is that there was no common currency then, so how did passengers pay for their rides? (Hint: what had just been discovered in California?)

Yes, passengers paid in gold. It took 2 oz of gold for a wagon ride from San Francisco to San Jose, about $32 then. Considering that most people earned $1/day, a stagecoach ride was an extravagance. 

Another question that stumped the students: How long did it take for a stage coach to ride from SF to SJ? Given that it takes about 1.5 hours now with traffic, guesses ranged from hours to days.  Answer: It took 3 horses pulling for 6-9 hours. They would have needed to change horses at stage stops. Wikipedia has a list of Peninsula Mile Houses, including 7 Mile House in Brisbane and Halfway House in San Mateo.

Students could do a few activities here - they could use a scale to measure some "gold" (pyrite). They could also write messages and stick them to a "Message Tree" - since there were no postal service, and towns were small with the stagecoach stop being a hub, it was common to hang notes off trees and hope the recipient would pick them up the next time they were in town.

Messages from our group

How we paid for our stagecoach ride

To our students' delight, the docent then divided the group into smaller groups of 10, then invited them for a stagecoach ride. Once aboard, the docent demonstrated how the ride might have felt on the uneven roads by rocking the coach, to a flurry of squeals.  The stagecoach was expensive, and carried only a few passengers so it made sense that it would be succeeded by the train. 

The construction of the railroad from San Francisco to San Jose reduced the travel time to 2.5 hours. However, it was still expensive so it remained the mode of transport for the wealthy who worked in San Francisco and came back to homes on the Peninsula. 

While we sat in front of the train cutout, our docent told a thrilling story when Mr. William Ralston, once decided to race the train in riding from San Francisco to his home in Belmont. To his advantage: the best horses money could buy, and a path that avoided a hill that would slow down the train. Against  him: the superior horsepower of the train. Which would win? The story had us on the edge of our seats, and you would have to ask the docent or read the archives to learn who won. 

The docent also told us about carriages, the car of the 1850s. There was a spider phaeton on display, the race car of the 1850s.  Per Wikipedia, the "Spider" name came its agility in maneuvering just like in nature, and "Phaeton" from its speed after mythical Phaethon, son of Helios, who nearly set the Earth on fire while attempting to drive the chariot of the Sun.



All this was very well, but trains and phaetons remained the domain of the upper class. The middle class would not use mass transport until streetcars/trolleys, which was our next stop in exploration.

The streetcar ran from San Francisco to San Mateo. It cost less than a train and was pulled by electric cables. There are no streetcars left in San Mateo county, but you can still see them in San Francisco.

The driver of a streetcar had to regulate the power flow - he could make the streetcar go faster by increasing the power, but too much power would shut it down. 

Students enjoyed "driving" the streetcar, one at a time, before getting off to ring the bell. 

After that, we came to familiar ground - the automobile. Students were asked to find differences between a large Chevrolet car of the era vs the cars we drove nowadays. At first, it didn't seem very different but once the docent started pointing out the details, they came tumbling out - large wheels, tail light designs which were different for each year, optional seatbelts. One difference which caught our fancy was that the car could actually have a record player - because cars were so long and heavy, the ride was smooth enough that a record player could play without skipping.

Photo credit: San Mateo County History Museum

We then moved into the next room, Charles Parson's Ships of the World. Mr. Parsons, a hobbyist from San Carlos, had meticulously crafted 24 models of famous ships. Most of the details lay in the descriptions of the ship, so the young students didn't appreciate the ships as much but the docent made it interesting by asking them to pick their favorite ship and to tell her its name, source of power (sail, oars, engine) and why they liked it. Older students would appreciate this room - they will likely find ships that tie in to whatever period of history they are studying.

Chinese (Foochow) junk model

To wrap up, we went downstairs to the classroom where students made their own ship models. Here, they went to town - designing ships with multiple sources of power, and decorating them.

The students left, happily chatting about their boats and full of stories to tell back home. This was another excellent field trip by the San Mateo County History Museum, and we highly recommend it.