The museum is open from Tuesday through Saturday, June 1st through September 30th and wouldn't you know it - we visited on May 21st, so were unable to experience their indoor displays. Included in these displays are American Indian display, a railroad memorabilia display, farm machinery, steam engine, combines, tools, guns, a prison cell, printing press, vintage fire engines and a display dealing with the
outlaw, Harry Tracy, who, after killing several police officers and civilians, escaped capture for a month before being cornered and killing himself in nearby Creston, WA.
Outside, arrayed around the grounds are several pieces of old agricultural equipment, an Austin road grader, a very old and decrepit Yuba crawler tractor and a tall bell tower, complete with bell. In a shed to the south of the main building are more implements and various pieces of flotsam and jetsam.
To a gearhead, by far the most interesting item on the grounds is the Yuba 12-25 'Ball Tread' crawler. Unique among crawler tractors of any era, it rode on steel balls between the track and frame instead of the more common pins and rollers. The design was the brainchild of one Clarence A. Henneuse, a master mechanic at the time in the employ of C.L. Best, a major early competitor in the crawler tractor market. Powered by a 25 (or so) horsepower gasoline engine, the crawler ran on two steel tracks with a single steerable steel wheel at the front, steered via cables running back to the operator's platform. This is a model 20, serial number 612S (or 6128, difficult to read). When manufactured by Clarence Henneuse's Ball Tread Company, these were designated Model 12-25. After the company was purchased by the Yuba Construction Company they seem to have retained the 12-25 designation, though the model number on the name plate reads "20".
The story of the development of the tractor follows.
The Crawler that Rolled
During the years from 1910 to 1920, the budding tractor industry was a hotbed of inventive activity that resulted in a lot of very creative ways to solve the problems inherent in making a successful machine. There were many crackpot ideas, as well as sound ones, with wheel arrangements, engine placement and power trains taking every conceivable form. Many types of crawler designs as well were tried, with one of the more unusual being the 'Ball Tread' tractor. C.L. Best (whose crawler tractors were the main competition to Ben Holt's Caterpillars, from about 1913, until the two companies merged in 1925), believed in constant improvement in his products, and employed an excellent group of master mechanics. One of these men, Clarence A. Henneuse, developed a method of using balls between the track and frame, instead of pins and rollers. Apparently, Mr. Best wasn't impressed by the idea, so in 1912, Henneuse, along with Mr. Frame, of Benecia, W. J. Benson, of San Jose, and Alfred Johnson, of Wintersville, all in California, formed the Ball Tread Company in Detroit to market the tractor.
The first Ball Tread, a Model 12-25, featured two tracks at the rear and a single front steering wheel. Each of the two tracks ran on two rows of large (2.25 inches in diameter), chilled cast iron balls that ran in steel races on the inside of the track links and the outside of the rigid track frame. An oil tank was mounted inside each track frame to provide drip lubrication to the ball races and the drive sprockets. The balls were claimed to distribute the weight of the tractor evenly over each tread, along with providing reduced wear and a better bearing surface on side hills.
The front tiller wheel was mounted with a three-inch caster to allow it to normally run in a straight line. As a result, the machine required little steering effort on the part of the operator, whose horizontal steering wheel was connected to the tiller wheel by steel cables. Each track was independently driven through a reversible, planetary clutch controlled by a hand lever, allowing one track to be driven forward while the other was stopped or driven in reverse. Most steering was done with these hand levers.
In 1914, the Ball Tread Company was purchased by the Yuba Construction Company, a large California firm that specialized in dredging for gold in the Yuba River, and in building gold dredging machinery. Yuba continued to sell the 12-25 and a larger 18-35 Ball Tread, building the tractors in their Marysville and Benecia plants.
From Farm Collector
