Virtual Field Trip: The Concord Coach
With a unique design, the Concord Coach became the most popular type of stagecoach in the world in the mid-19th century. It helped settle the American West and explore vast continents like Australia and Africa.
This virtual field trip visits one of the largest collections of Concord coaches in existence today at Johhny Prescott Oil & Propane in Concord and at the museum of the Mount Washington Auto Road in Gorham.
A graphic organizer helps students record what they learn from the video, which, when combined with the activity, tackles the question: how did the Concord coach change the United States?
The video is 19 minutes.
Before You Take Your Virtual Field Trip . . .
List modes of transportation
Ask students to think of all the ways people and goods are moved around town, the state, the country, and the world. Consider making a t-chart that sorts these modes into past and present. Does a stagecoach make the list? If not, ask students to share what they know about stagecoaches.
Discuss the big question
Ask for student ideas about the big question, “How did the Concord Coach change the United States?” What are ways they think a stagecoach could impact a whole country? Record student thinking. Review their ideas after the virtual field trip. Update or add to the list based on knowledge acquired during the trip.
During Your Virtual Field Trip . . .
Organize facts and ideas
An optional graphic organizer is provided to help students identify and expand upon the three key ideas addressed during the trip. As they listen and watch, students can check off the key idea as they hear it mentioned. The chart below provides space for students to note supporting facts that relate to each idea. This graphic organizer could be used as part of a preview to the trip. It also works well as a review exercise after the trip and can be completed as a whole group or independently.
Travel Log
This graphic organizer helps students organize the information they learn in the virtual field trip.
Video
Virtual Field Trip: The Concord Coach
2023
Image Credit: New Hampshire Historical Society
Traveling the Roads with the Concord Coach
In the 1800s, the Concord Coach could be found all over the world, moving people and things to where they needed to go—and they were all made right here in New Hampshire! Let’s visit some Concord Coaches to learn more about how this stagecoach traveled the roads of the past, and answer our big question: how did the Concord Coach change the United States?
After Your Virtual Field Trip . . .
Take a Concord Coach journey
Reinforce the many ways the Concord Coach helped change the United States with this brief simulation. Set each of the five “stage” cards, question side up, at different locations around the classroom. Divide students into small groups. Each group will travel from one stage to the next, but only by correctly answering the question on the card. Consider assigning some students to take turns as station agents or hotel owners who stay at each stage to ask the question, confirm the answers, and mark tickets. Groups can start at any stage but must answer all the questions.
A Concord Coach for Every Journey
Want To Do More?
Go further with these extension activities
Write a Concord Coach story. Show students “The Pemigewasset Coach,” a painting of a Concord Coach available in the Moose on the Loose Media Library. Guide students as they make “Notice and Wonder” observations about the painting. Then, ask students to continue the story of the journey. Who is on the coach? Where is it going? What happens along the way? Use the writing genre that best serves your curriculum goals (e.g. poem, play, fiction, or graphic novel).
“Build” a Concord Coach. Plot a rectangle with the dimensions of a “Kearsarge” model of Concord Coach from 1891 (78 inches wide, 152 inches long) on the floor with tape. It had room for nine passengers and needed four horses. Using the “coach” as their stage, students can perform a short skit about a typical journey.
Explore other 19th-century modes of transportation. The learning activities in Lesson 1 “New Hampshire on the Move” from
Unit 7: Building a State, 1784 to 1850 present a wide variety of ways to explore and compare the modes of transportation that helped New Hampshire grow.
The New Hampshire Historical Society thanks the following organizations for assisting in the making of this virtual field trip:
Johnny Prescott Oil & Propane
Mt. Washington Auto Road
Abbot-Downing Historical Society