Between 1892 and 1902, Owen Wister published stories about a man from Virginia who settled in Wyoming after the Civil War. When these were collected and published as The Virginian, A Horseman of the Plains, Wister declared the Old West was dead. The popularity of his novels proved otherwise.
Booth’s Sardines (1900c.). Besides the sardines, other “sophisticated nourishment” included deviled ham, potted chicken, corned beef, and condensed milk.
Among the changes in the New West was “the sophisticated nourishment” made possible by prepared foods. “These picnic pots and cans,” he explains, “were the first of her trophies that Civilization dropped upon Wyoming’s virgin soil. The cow-boy is now gone to worlds invisible: the wind has blown away the white ashes of his camp-fires, but the empty sardine box lies rusting over the face of the Western earth.”
Featured Image: William Henry Jackson. Camp wagon on a Texas roundup (1900c.). Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress
See Owen Wister. The Virginian, A Horseman of the Plains (New York: Macmillan & Co., 1902).