In the 1860s, Upper Lake, California, was a farming and mill town, but because of Clear Lake’s boating and fishing, and the healthful benefits of...
The Constable Butcher
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Frontier Fare
That’s My Steak, Valance
Leadville’s mining boom exploded between 1878 and 1879—population between 6,000 to 8,000—and the Colorado frontier town gained a reputation for...
The Fair’s Frontier Fare
Fairs gave states and counties the opportunity to show off their best. At both local and international fairs, food helped attendees learn other...
Back to Basque
Basque immigrants hailed from a region that stretches across the Pyrenees Mountains into France and northern Spain. They first arrived in America...
Lewis & Clark-Inspired Whiskey
After explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark found limestone springs in 1804 that later generations used to fill water barrels on their way...
Cheering Our Culinary Journey
I reflect on my years writing Frontier Fare, I’m reminded of the wonderful historical and literary food journeys I’ve taken. This column has...
Surviving a Meal in Dodge City
Once the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway reached the cowtown of Dodge City, Kansas, in 1872, restaurants and hotels sprang up, between 1872...
Black Bart’s Epicurean Escapades
Notorious for his 1880s stage-coach robberies, what did gentleman bandit and poet Black Bart eat and where? Everyone thought San Francisco resident...
Suds for Crab Cowboys
Texas's oldest continuously operating tavern can be found in Austin. August Scholz opened his establishment after the Civil War, in 1866, and it...
Red Hot for the Crowd
In 1879, when the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe chugged into Las Vegas, New Mexico Territory, the railroad brought in a wide variety of food that...
Mark Twain’s Vittles and Viands
Once Missouri-born Samuel Clemens headed west in July 1861, he began his lifelong career of penning frontier life accounts that were both serious...
Dinner in Deadwood with Calamity Jane
In the fall of 1875, a makeshift tent town popped up, beginning a stampede to Deadwood Gulch. By the winter of 1876, the population of this Dakota...