Cowboys Ate These Canned Foods Along The Open Range Of The American West

Driving herds of cattle across the hot, dry Western U.S., cowboys lived a rugged but highly romanticized life. If popular culture were our historical guide, it would be believed perhaps that these cattlemen subsisted exclusively on strong coffee and pots of beans — with perhaps the occasional hare or rattlesnake roasted over an open fire. Fortunately for the cowboys, while beans, coffee, and wild game did often feature heavily in their diet, there was plenty more to it than that. In fact, some luxuries came in the form of canned goods.

Canned goods were first developed right around the turn of the 19th century. By the time the most romanticized "Wild West" period rolled around — often considered between 1865 and 1895 — canning was a major operation around the world. Despite the rugged image of the cowboy, though, their favorite canned goods probably weren't what you'd expect. The cowboy image might be used to sell cans of chili these days, but for the fellers working the range back then, what actually drew their interest most were canned fruits and vegetables like tomatoes and peaches.

There are a number of reasons that these foods were so popular with cowboys. For starters, their diet was typically pretty simple. In addition to all that coffee and wild game, when on the move cowboys also ate sourdough biscuits, salted beef and pork, dried fruit, and other long-lasting, easy-to-carry, and quick-to-prepare foods. Adding a can of fruit not only gave them a welcome taste of variety and freshness, but the water in the cans kept cowboys hydrated on the open range as well.

These days, one of the most common reasons to open a can of tomatoes is to make a pot of chili, but that was not the case for those Old West cattle drivers. Back then, chili was a regular part of chuck wagon menus, but it was a very different recipe, focusing on stewing meat with chiles, rather than the meat, beans, and tomatoes found in most modern chili recipes. Rather than being used to stew meat, those cowboy staple canned tomatoes were likely eaten straight or used to whip up a dish like pooch, a simple mixture of bread, tomatoes, and sugar.

Because of the way cowboys had to move during a drive, these canned goods were a prized luxury. Anytime you are responsible for carrying your own weight — even if it's on the back of a horse or stashed in a chuck wagon — things like canned goods are naturally disincentivized. Due to all that hydrating liquid in the can, they are both bulky and heavy, not to mention that these "air tights," as they were called, were also quite expensive. The campfire meals of the American West were mostly whipped up by chuck wagon cooks who relied on cheaper and easier-to-transport foods.

The most common time for a cowboy to indulge in canned goods may have been when they rode back into town. The cliche scene is that the first stop would be an Old West saloon for a fizzy sarsaparilla (or something stronger), but the true choice might've been to stop by the general store and spend those wages on as many cans of peaches as a cowboy could eat.