The Flying T Chuckwagon has been on the Black Hills scene since 1979, following one of the Old West’s most unique and time-honored folk traditions. Originally, the chuckwagon was a mobile mess hall, social center, and supply chest which accompanied cowboys on their cattle drives to rail heads hundreds of miles from home.
In the seventeen and eighteen hundreds, the abundant, nutritious grass that grew on the Great Plains permitted the development and rapid multiplication of great numbers of large meat-producing animals. The first was the bison, more popularly known as the buffalo. The next to come were cattle, which appeared in this part of the country in the late 1870s, after the Indian Wars had ended and the Black Hills opened up for settlement.