Galamander

Quick meaning: Galamander is a noun meaning (Maine, mining, historical) A customized horse- or ox-drawn stoneboat or wagon once used for hauling stone from quarries, with smaller front wheels and larger rear ones, and a derrick to lift blocks of stone on and off the vehicle.

Meaning

(Maine, mining, historical) A customized horse- or ox-drawn stoneboat or wagon once used for hauling stone from quarries, with smaller front wheels and larger rear ones, and a derrick to lift blocks of stone on and off the vehicle.

Example Sentences

"I think so too. And this is a galamander. You know this is the Galamander District?" / "So that's a galamander. Why it's just a cart, and I thought a galamander was some kind of animal, you know like a salamander."

Down at Vinalhaven, Me., which has just been celebrating its sesquicentennial, they used to use what they called a "galamander" to carry heavy stones from the granite quarries. The "galamander" is a combination stone-boat on wheels and a derrick.

Galamanders, drawn by oxen or horses, transported the blocks to the cutting sheds, which were usually located near the wharfs. Galamanders were elongated four-wheeled wagons equipped with derricks and the wheels of these locally made wagons were eight or nine feet in diameter. Maine galamanders are few today.

A relic of the island's quarrying days, the galamander was a massive oak and iron wagon with nine-foot rear wheels. It had once been used to carry slabs of granite from the quarries to the cutting sheds. […] Since then, the galamander had been set up as a memorial to the industry―long since gone―and had doubled as a kind of jungle gym for generations of island kids.

Word Forms

• galamanders

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include gundalow, hoverbarge, salamander, land-salamander, logboat, quahogger.

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