The Chuck Wagon, a Panhandle Original
By Darla Bracken, fridarla19@yahoo.com
Colonel Charles Goodnight, a former Texas Ranger, had the first ranch in the Panhandle—the JA—in Palo Duro Canyon. You may have seen his dugout cabin near the rim when you visited there. He is credited with the invention of the chuck wagon in 1866. He converted an old Studebaker Army surplus wagon into a vehicle to carry “chuck”, as cowboy food was known as was also the lower part of the beef carcass. He built a tall box, which included shelves and drawers for supplies with a hinged lid. This box was made to fit the back of the wagon. When the hinged lid was lowered, it created a worktable. There were also foldout legs attached also to stabilize the workspace. The wagon was about 10 feet long and 38 to 40 inches wide. The ‘boot’ or bottom of the box was used to carry cooking utensils such as the Dutch oven, long-handled tin skillets, pots and pothooks for cooking over the campfire. Tin plates and cups and iron knives, forks and spoons were included for serving. The Studebaker wagon with its steel axle was chosen because it could withstand the grueling journey, which sometimes lasted as long a 5 or 6 months. The design was widely copied and soon wagon makers, including Studebaker, produced what they called a ‘Roundup’ model.
Underneath the chuck wagon, they stretched a cowhide (and later a piece of canvas) hammock-style attached to the underbelly of the wagon to carry the fuel for the fire—wood, cow chips, whatever they could find. Known as the ‘possum-belly’, this fuel storage area was vital as fuel was rather scarce on the prairie. “Prairie Coal” otherwise known as cow patties or ‘brown rounds’ became one of the most readily available fuel sources.
The traveling pantry or Cowboy kitchen carried all the food staples needed for the long drive: flour, brown sugar, cornmeal, coffee ‘in the bean’, beans, lard, salt fatback, sometimes dried fruit when it was available, salt and pepper. A firkin or quarter-size covered barrel of sourdough starter for making biscuits was included as was a full-size water barrel which held 2 days water supply for the 10-15 cowboys. The herd and the horses had to be watered from natural playa lakes and other water sources along the way. The coffee pot was on duty 24 hours a day. Re-supply places were few and far between in the early days so the chuck wagon had to very carefully stocked. Beef was fresh and plentiful on the hoof and they wasted nothing.
The body of the wagon was used to carry bedrolls and slickers, branding and running irons, bulk food supplies and horse feed, lariats—whatever else might be needed. A jockey box held the hand tools. Other items included in the chuck wagon box were a coffee grinder, a meat grinder, a lantern, medicine, a Bible, a wind-up alarm clock (had to be up early to fix breakfast) and whiskey. The wagon was pulled by horses, mules or oxen, which were also the driver’s responsibility.
The cook or ‘cookie’ as he was known by all was certainly king of this mobile domain. He was not only the cook, but also served the crew as barber, banker, doctor, settler of disputes, letter writer, father figure and confessor while serving as the vital morale booster to the group. They battled everything from wind, sand, and rain to rattlesnakes, gunshots and sickness. The cook was usually an older man and good ones were hard to find and even harder to keep. The cookie had to be able to take a lot of ribbing being called ‘dough puncher’, ‘pot wrangler or wrassler’, bean master, biscuit shooter, dough belly, belly cheater or ‘gut robber’ always behind his back—to his face he was called ‘Cookie’. If you complained about the food, the job was yours.
Cowboy etiquette, known by all except the greenest of green horns, dictated that:
-Riders always stayed downwind of the chuck wagon so as not to get dirt in the food.
-Horses were not to be tied to the chuck wagon.
-There was no using the worktable as the dining table.
-Cowboys were very careful not to let the lid touch the dirt while serving themselves from the pot.
-Never take the last of anything unless everyone had been served.
-Always scrape your plate clean and stack it in the wreck pan to be cleaned (when water was scarce, they were cleaned with sand.)
The menu varied little “Beef, Bacon, Biscuits and Beans and always Coffee”. With dried fruit, an occasional pie appeared, if the cook were of a mind, and the brand of the outfit was sometimes cut into the top crust as the steam vent.
As the cowboy storytellers gathered around the evening campfire, they told many Texas tall tales or ‘windies’. The pocket musicians or mouth organists (harmonica players) added their part to the evenings quiet winding down time before retiring to their bedrolls for a night’s rest (if they weren’t on night watch). As Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving and the JA cowboys traveled along the trail they created to eastern New Mexico and Colorado, we can only imagine what they felt when the dinner bell rang and the chuck wagon cook yelled “Chuck’s up, Come and get it!!” It had to be a very inviting and welcome sound.
