Was puttering around on the computer today, and ran across this. As I recall, this was a Library of Congress image that I was able to use for an article on the Cody-produced Ballard Pacific. I just thought it was a great photo. 

Click the photo, then click again, and you can look at it in pretty good detail. 

Cheers...   Jim 

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Beautiful picture of the times and it makes one wonder where they were headed at the time to possibly start a new life.

My Pacific in .40-70 SS. The Cody team surely did nice work! 

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The young fellow on the right is wearing a cartridge belt full of some very LONG cartridges.  I wonder what calibre his Ballard was chambered in?

As many times as I've seen this photo, this is the first time I've had this "imagining".  The lady is wearing tight-fitting gloves.  Is she simply keeping the sun off her hands or is she at least sometimes driving the wagon?

As you said, old photos sometimes spark more than 1000 words!

Bill Lawrence

40_Rod wrote on Jun 16^th, 2019 at 9:38am:


My mistake. The #5 1/2 was not .45-120, but .45-100 Ballard. That's the .45 2 9/16", not 2 7/8" Sharps version.

I blew it up pretty big and I think its a Pacific. Also above woman's head is another Pacific. Its only a guess but in the cartridge belt is a 40-90 or 40-85 Ballard.
  Don

This is terribly crude, but enlarging the image and holding a piece of paper to the screen to mark it, I note that the vertical height of the butt of the Ballard in the wagon is very nearly the same as the length of the loaded cartridges in the belt. The young fellow is at a slightly different distance from the camera, but not much.

The butt of my Cody-made Pacific is about 4 3/8" in height. I'm in the middle of a move, so I don't have access to my loaded .45-120-550 rounds nor to my reference books. 

What I can say is that the rounds in the belt certainly appear to be patched. I know it was done, but that seems like a tough environment for a patched bullet. Wouldn't take much moisture or rough handling to make a patched round tough to chamber. 

Or perhaps I'm biased by the issues I had with my old Farmingdale Long Range Express Sharps. Its barrel had that cotton pickin' "paper patch throat" and was quite fussy about rolling the leading edge of the patch unless spotlessly clean. 

The original information with that photo stated it was from Nebraska. So many little details to ponder about!