Cowboy Lifestyle: What Did Cowboys Eat?

If you’ve ever wondered what cowboys would eat on the open range, you’ve come to the right place. Unlike the variety of foods prepared for both cowboys and non-cowboys to eat today, what cowboys were known to eat in the 1800s and early 1900s were generally categorized into three groups. I call them the staples, the extras and the treats.

After spring roundups, cowboys herded their cattle on the trail towards a midwestern railroad station where the cattle could be shipped to the Eastern markets of New York, Philadelphia or Boston. And, as cattle drives increased in the 1860s, cooks (or “cookies” as they were often known) experienced increasing difficulties in feeding the hungry mouths of the crews tending to all those cattle. That’s about the time when a Texas Ranger and rancher named Charles Goodnight invented the chuckwagon, and in 1866, partnered with rancher Oliver Loving to create the Goodnight-Loving Trail to move their cattle to railheads.

Chuckwagon cooks, like this “cookie” from the JA Ranch in Texas, were the lifeblood of cattle drives of the Old West. Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.

And, on the long days and nights on the trail, food was as important as you could imagine because it provided the working cowboy with comfort and nutrition. On most days, cowboys were served two meals out of the chuckwagon: breakfast and the…