Snow covered the seven hills and valleys of Dubuque during the winter months long before the first settler arrived, but when the city’s population began to grow, dealing with snow-covered trails and roadways became necessary. The SnoGo, an innovation in snow removal developed by the city’s Klauer Manufacturing Company, revolutionized snow removal in Dubuque and across the United States.
In the 1800s, dealing with snow was primitive. Cities relied on manual labor before the invention of horse-drawn, wedge-shaped plows in the mid-1800s. In 1862, Milwaukee earned the distinction of being the first city to use horse-drawn snow plows. While plowing was an advantage over hiring crews of men with shovels, large snow banks created by the plows became a hindrance and sometimes had to be removed – by men with shovels who tossed the snow into carts to be hauled away. Sometimes, the best way to address a snowfall was using horse-drawn snow rollers to flatten and compact the snow so carts with skis or sleighs could glide over the snow-covered streets.
When automobiles began replacing horse-drawn carts and carriages in the early 1900s, snow removal also began to be mechanized. Car and truck-mounted snowplows started appearing in the 1920s. Dubuque’s Klauer Manufacturing Company, founded in 1870, stood at the forefront when it came to mechanized snow removal when it developed the SnoGo between 1926 and 1934.
SnoGo snow throwers were mounted on the front of a truck. Huge augers carried the snow to a rotor fan capable of tossing the snow 200 feet. The early versions could remove up to 40 tons of snow a minute, clearing a nine-foot-wide path of 12-inch-deep snow at 20 miles an hour.
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