33 thoughts on “Puzzle: Pioneer Days”

1. Those western saddles have English style stirrups–but maybe I’m being overly picky on that one.

2. Cute, LauraN. I say the TV antenna.

3. I say the sign on the store saying “TVs.”

4. LauraN, I like being overly picky too — so I guess I’ll go for the grocer’s (grocers’?) apostrophe in “TV’s.” That’s out of place in any era.

5. The “Bus Stop” sign. There would not have been buses in pioneer days.

6. airplanes flying in the air or else they are super-fast birds

7. I suspect the Little Lord Fauntleroy outfit, with the shirt ruffles, is somewhat out of place on the frontier. I predict that as soon as his mother lets go of his hand and he wanders off, the other little boys are going to knock that fancy hat off Little Lord Faultleroy’s head.

8. Actually, I googled that one. The pony express only operated for about 18 months in 1860-1861. I found a website that quoted an 1861 fashion magazine listing sailor hats as very appropriate for small boys. However, this was probably small boys in NYC or London, not the frontier. So I bet you’re right about how the other boys will react. But the other problem is that any woman with the fashion sense to dress her little boy like that would not wear a sun bonnet to town in 1860-61. Hats were the dress-up thing by then.

   I’m also unclear on how rude the man purchasing the TV is for leaving his hat on in the store.

9. Are you kidding? The other little boys aren’t going to get a chance — that fancy hat is going to be “accidentally” ruined by the sprinkler the moment his mother’s eyes are turned. 🙂

10. I’ll take the pressurized water system.

11. Four trees? Didn’t some early pioneer supposedly write in his journal that there was maybe one tree in the entire Salt Lake Valley when they arrived?

12. Along with the sprinklers, a lawn is anachronistic for the pioneer era.

13. Somehow I think this is the most, um, erudite? is that the right word here? examination this puzzle has ever had in its 55-year life!

    Thank you for the semi-natural mood booster, friends.

14. The kerning.

15. I still see a couple of things I can’t believe no one has mentioned. Have we waited long enough for others to comment?

16. How about the skyscraper? The only buildings of that day with that height were shot towers, clock towers, or church structures and this does not fit those molds.

17. That skyscraper would require a tremendous number of hand-made adobes, Dutchscouter, true.

18. Okay. I’m not waiting any longer. Skyscrapers would not have existed in pioneer times. And if we’re talking about early 1860s, neither was the bicycle the newsboy is riding. Ice cream was around at the time, but not sure it made it this far west, although it’s possible.

19. Ha! Somebody finally got the skyscraper.

20. Sharee, you are correct about the bicycle. 1860’s bicycles had pedals attached to the front wheel.

    Meanwhile, there is no way that horse can pull that wagon. The girth attached to the wagon shafts is part of the braking system (but only part). There is nothing for the horse to actually pull against.

    I wondered about the ice cream as well. It could have been available at that time, but I don’t know if it would have been.

    Vadar has already covered the tree issue. And the contrails are as anachronistic as the airplanes.

    Is there anything else we can critique?

21. Oh, I’m sure if we try hard enough, we’ll find something — is that harness/TV store wide open to the street, or is that a show window with a huge pane of glass? ‘Cause I’m thinkin’ it would have been impossible to transport a pane like that across the Plains by oxcart, and even difficult to do it by railroad.

    And ice cream was possible if there was still ice in the icehouse to make it, but it would have been special event food and probably made in relatively small quantities — not something that would justify painting a window to advertise its availability.

    See? Still room for critiquing. 🙂

22. ha… trees that tall? But as for the bus… I seem to recall reading in Little Women about Jo and Professor Bahr waiting for the “Autobus” in the suburbs of, what was it? Boston?, which I guess was a horse-driven predecessor to the Bus. Wikipedia says that horse-driven buses existed in the 1820s… but in Pioneer Utah, maybe not so much.

23. and by golly I sure misspelled the professor’s name: should have been Bhaer.

24. They could have transported that glass across the plains, but it would have been a real pain.

25. Where’s the “groan” button?

26. The government didn’t start using chemtrails to control its citizens until the 1990’s…

27. Those look like birds to me. Or possibly flying sharks. But the tails are all wrong to be airplanes.

28. And if, as is often stated, people can be pioneers today, it’s a whole different set of anachronisms.

29. …although the TVs and the antenna are anachronistic either way.

30. Someone already pointed out that the pony express was only around for a year, so it’s unlikely to show up in a real picture of the pioneers. And the panes of glass in the General Store seem much larger than what was typical for the time.

31. Seth, I have read that when glass making technology finally came to the west (ie San Francisco), the machines were much improved over the older ones being used on the east coast. They could make much larger panes of glass. The Victorian homes built in San Francisco tend to have original one pane per sash windows, while Victorian homes in the east are more likely to have 6 or 9 pane sashes. This results in a sort of reverse snobbery as easterners sometimes consider the San Francisco Victorian homes to be ‘unauthentic’ even thought they actually have the original glass.

    That is still 20-30 years later in history, but while we’re sharing really obscure historical facts, we might as well have fun.

32. I can’t believe no one else saw the laptop on the wagon behind the woman’s bonnet! 😉

33. Laptop? I thought that was the driver’s seat.

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