The Chuckwagon: An Enduring Legacy

The Center of the West maintains strong connections to chuckwagon history, beginning with Western artwork. As a student of Howard Pyle’s renowned Brandywine School for artists, N.C. Wyeth desired to better understand life out west so that he could create accurate depictions of it in his paintings. Former Whitney Western Art Museum Curator Sarah Boehme, Ph.D. writes, “Wyeth knew he needed to see the West himself, to gain the personal knowledge that would create ideas for his art.” In October 1904, he set out for the Gil Ranch near Denver, Colorado where he spent a few weeks as a cowpoke, participating fully in fall round-up activities. Here he experienced the rugged life that only the West could provide—roping, riding, and enjoying meals from the back of a chuckwagon. This later inspired one of his famous paintings, The Lee of the Grubwagon, now hanging in the Buffalo Bill Museum at the Center of the West, a gift of John M. Schiff. In his account of life at Gil Ranch—A Day with the Round-up: An Impression—Wyeth recalls returning to camp after a long day of driving cattle: “We grouped about the [chuck] wagon, sitting on the tongues, on unrolled beds, anywhere, perfectly contented, watching the cook prepare the evening meal. The odor of coffee scented the air, and I was as hungry and tired as I never was before.” Both Wyeth’s painting and his words enrich the combined sense of historical reality and mythos surrounding the chuckwagon and its cultural impact on the American West.