Frontier Cooking

America’s westward push created a series of new frontiers, ranging through the plains of the Mississippi, across the Rockies, to the far reaches of the Pacific coast and the Southwest. New frontiers quickly turned “old,” to be replaced again by new, but the designation of Far West, for the purposes of frontier cooking, extends from 1820 to 1880 and includes five major westward population thrusts: the trading frontier of the mountain men, the trans-Mississippi West of the overland migration, homesteading on the Great Plains, the gold boom, and the great cattle drives. The range of such movements is vast, with countless foods and culinary styles that were brought, exchanged, enjoyed, and discovered along the way.