Beginning in 1893, Emmanuel served as a church on wheels across much of the western United States during the railroads’ westward expansion, when many fast-growing communities were wild, lawless, and without churches. One of only thirteen chapel cars built and commissioned—seven Baptist, three Episcopalian, and three Catholic—it provided a venue for worship, Sunday school, weddings, funerals, baptisms, and counseling. Attended by people of all denominations, Emmanuel is credited with starting 51 congregations and the baptism of more than 4000 people. Its chapel seated 80 to 100 people, and sometimes as many as 150 children crowded in for Sunday school, while the missionaries traveling with it lived in cramped 9' x 18' front quarters with few amenities. The second Baptist chapel car built, at a cost of $7500.00, Emmanuel traveled the rails for 49 years, serving communities in states including Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming before coming to rest in South Dakota. After its final church service in 1942, its ownership changed several times and it was used as a storage shed, a meeting site, and briefly in youth ministry. Moved to Prairie Village in 1972 and later restored, Emmanuel survives as one of only a few remaining chapel cars, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and represents an important and uncommon chapter in the settling of the American West.