We investigate interesting properties of the Jacobian of a universal family of covers of the projective line over a variety $C$ of large dimension in characteristic $p$. Since we construct this family as a quotient of certain Artin-Schreier curves, the endomorphism ring of the Jacobian contains copies of a subfield of $\Q(\zeta_p)$ (which is totally ramified at $p$). For some applications, we discuss real multiplication, the Newton polygon and the reduced a-numbers.