In the days before the automobile, everything you needed came to your local store in wagons drawn by horses. EVERYTHING! These are teamsters during the Alaska Gold Rush. This is 1907! Meaning long after the rest of the United States was using trucks, in Alaska horses were still the primary means of transportation. This was not only because there were few vehicles in Alaska, but there were no gas stations and in most Alaska Gold Rush boomtowns, roads were knee-deep in mud all summer.
[From THE HUMAN FACE OF THE ALASKA GOLD RUSH.]