This is at a place that used to be a farm or ranch. It think it is some kind of grader. It has been through at least one brush fire so the paint and the tires (I'm assuming it had tires) and anything else nonmetallic has burned off. Any idea how old it would be?
There are a lot of gears. It looks like everything was worked manually. There are no signs of any engine or motor.
I think these gears steered the back wheels.
I am sure that it was a horse drawn grader. It would have been obsolete when I was a kid and I was born in 1936. There was probably no rubber on it so fires would have done little damage. Any paint would have been a victim of sunlight,
It may well have been used to keep a road surface relitively smooth for early automobiles. The actual road building would have been done by hand, and if the location is Northern California that would have been Chinese laborers.
We have certainly come a long way in many of our lifetimes.
