Look for one new feature at this year’s McClain County Fair as you enter the fairgrounds.

Bison Hill Chuckwagon Catering will be set up and cooking September 9 and 10 on an authentic 1860 Newton chuckwagon.

Cowboy chef Bill Shipley will be wearing period-correct clothing. He will serve up the history of the chuckwagon along with tasty samples.

Assisting him as cook’s helper will be Mark Laudermilk of Choctaw.

Chuckwagons originated on the early cattle trails and the first one was an Army wagon purchased by Texas rancher Charles Goodnight around 1866.

The cattle drives that would follow were born of necessity.

With Abraham Lincoln out of the picture, the government was determined to punish the former Confederacy.

In Texas, ranchers could only get $4 to $6 a head for their cattle.

In Santa Fe, however, the going price for beef on the hoof was upwards of $20 per head.

Goodnight decided to drive his cattle to New Mexico.

After purchasing the Army wagon, he had a carpenter at his ranch build a chuck box to fit in the rear of the wagon.

Oliver Loving added his herd to Goodnight’s and the two ranchers and their drovers forged a trail to Santa Fe.

The venture was so successful that they repeated the drive the next year.

Then hearing that cattle were bringing even more in Missouri, they partnered with Jesse Chisholm, an Indian who owned a trading post near present-day Lexington, and drove the herds there.

The Goodnight-Loving Trail and later the Chisholm Trail became major thoroughfares for Texas herds crossing Oklahoma to markets in Missouri and Kansas.

But the chuckwagon was more than a rolling kitchen.

Cookie, or Belly Cheater as he was sometimes known, was second in command, topped only by the trail boss.

But not even the trail boss crossed him in camp. That was Cookie’s exclusive domain and his word was absolute.

One thing Cookie did in every camp was point the wagon tongue toward the north star. That was the drive’s compass on the featureless plains.

Chuckwagon fare on the trail consisted of a breakfast of beans, sourdough biscuits and coffee. For lunch, the drovers ate in the saddle a meal comprised of hardtack and jerky.

Supper was basically a repeat of breakfast and, occasionally, stew.

The only meat on the menu came from game along the trail or, possibly, an injured beef that had to be destroyed.

The cattle drives were an  iconic, albeit short-lived, chapter in the history of the American West.

By 1895, the plains were being parceled out for homesteads and towns.

The expansion of railroads meant ranchers only needed to get their herds to the nearest railhead.

The drives like those initiated by Goodnight, Loving and Chisholm were phased out, to be recalled 127 years later by aficionados of the era like Shipley and Laudermilk of Bison Hill and other cowboy cooks.