Thanks to the donation from Jim and Jerry McWilliams and painstaking restoration work provided by the Cheyenne Antique Tractor Club, the Gardens now has a 1928 Farmall “Regular Series” Tractor as part of the 1900’s Rotary Century Plaza landscape.
1890 to 1930 was a time of dramatic change, especially in agriculture. Inventions sparked more inventions as farmers continually modified machines to make farming easier. The first tractors were thought to be too massive and expensive for the average farmer and would only become appealing when they could easily replace the horse.
After 1912, the smaller, lighter and cheaper tractors caught the interest of the farmer. With increased automobile use, farmers became used to driving and more comfortable with tractor use. Each tractor was used for a specific purpose requiring farmers to own a collection of tractors to complete the work which was very expensive.
Farmers initially felt there were advantages to “horse power”over “horsepower” in that horses provided not only work and companionship for the farmer in the field, but also fertilizer, leather, and even uses for bones and hoofs. With horses, there were no “new models” to buy and no new technology to learn.
The early tractors were designed to only do one thing. For instance- you needed one tractor to plow and another to harvest.
This McCormick-Deering Farmall “Regular Series” tractor, introduced in 1924, was one of the first tractors made to do a variety of chores thanks to the invention of the “Power take-off.” This model would could do what it used to take a fleet of tractors to do. Because it could do it all, it was given the name “Farm-all.”