AMERICAN FORK — Matt Burch’s horse-drawn carriage business began as a hobby, innocently launched one day about 25 years ago when Matt’s father, Stan, was looking for something to do in retirement and said, “Let’s make a wagon the horses can pull.”
It became something to do on the side when people asked if they could rent the wagon, and the horses, for a special occasion, like a wedding or a birthday.
It went full-time when people started asking for something specific: Do you have a stagecoach? for instance, or a surrey with a fringe on top?
“Things just evolved,” says Matt, who 12 years ago bid adieu to his day job — he worked in private security — and dove full-bore into building, restoring and renting horse-drawn carriages.
His barn became his office, shortening his daily commute considerably.
In the years since, if enough people have asked for it, he’s made it or restored it. Want a horse-drawn hearse for a funeral? Check. A Cinderella coach for a wedding? Yep. An Amish cart? Got it. A chariot, a prisoner transport, a sleigh, an old-time taxi, a covered wagon? Check, check, check, check and check.
In all, Burch & Sons Horse Drawn Carriages has 41 vehicles of various descriptions stored in the barn behind Matt’s house on the northeast side of American Fork. Plus another 49 handcarts. And one cannon.
The seven horses are around the corner in the pasture.
Welcome to the 19th century.
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Matt, 52, can’t quite believe his good fortune. The thing he loved to do for fun turned into the thing he loves to do for work.
When he’s not restoring and repairing the vehicles in his fleet, he’s taking them here, there and everywhere. Besides crisscrossing Utah, he and his four sons, Trent, Austin, Gavin and George, routinely transport their horses and wagons across the country and into Canada.
They did 40 parades last year, more weddings, funerals, anniversaries, birthday parties and proms than they can count, and 15 movies.
The handcarts in the LDS-related films “17 Miracles” and “Ephraim’s Rescue” were theirs, and the covered wagons in “The Work and the Glory" I and II, among many more.
Matt stays on location with his wagons and horses until the movie is shot. He also usually does the driving, which takes some getting used to. The stagecoach, he says, “is like driving a bus in water.”
One of his favorite assignments is dressing up in a black suit, cowboy style, and taking his 117-year-old hearse — he found it a few years ago in Missouri — to funerals. Not because he’s morbid, but because of the positive reaction when families step outside after the services and see the horse and coach that will deliver their loved one to his or her final resting place.
“There’s just something about that that resonates. It moves people,” he says. “They’re good tears.”
Getting in a horse-drawn wagon, of any description, for any reason, is excellent therapy, he maintains. “There’s no rush. You have no choice. You’ve gotta slow down and watch everything around you.”
His handcarts are in high demand every summer during “trek season,” when LDS Church groups replicate Mormon pioneers crossing the Plains on foot in the 1850s. Some of his handcarts are booked five years out.
But the carts are no cash cow. He’s found that an authentic handcart is not cheap to make and expensive to maintain — there’s a reason no one uses wood spokes anymore.
Still, the rewards are more than monetary. When people return from re-enacting the past, Matt gets to hear their stories, and he laps that up. “I love our heritage and our history,” he says, “and I love that I get to play a part in helping preserve it.”
He’ll go on keeping one foot in the present, the other in the past, as long as people keep asking him for rides — and they’re in no hurry to get there.
Lee Benson's About Utah column runs Mondays.
Email: benson@deseretnews.com