Horse Snowshoes
Weighty matters....
The photos and information above are borrowed from the Alaskan Heritage Bookshop website, which sells Alaskan books, Alaskan art, vintage Alaskan memorabilia and photographs, and much more. Based in Juneau, the site bills itself “The Museum of Alaska History Where Everything is for Sale.” One item no longer for sale is this snowshoe for a horse.
An article at Vintage Winter shares two photos of horses on snowshoes and notes, “We now believe that horse snowshoes were used over ~800 years ago. In more recent times horse snowshoes were made famous in the 1912 Antarctic expedition by Captain Robert Scott. It is now believed that if Captain Scott was not talked out of leaving behind horse snowshoes by his equine expert Captain Lawrence Oates they would have survived. 29 sets of horse snowshoes were left behind at Cape Evans while only 1 set was carried on the expedition.” You can read much more at the article, 19th Century Antique Horse Snowshoe at the always interesting Vintage Winter site.
in the early Minnesota logging camps, they were known as bog shoes to give the horses better footing in the swamps. i have a pair from my Grandfathers logging camp.