Kaan Ranch Cow Camp Roundup Chuckwagon

Meet chuckwagon owner/operator Rick Kaan, Hot Springs, SD

I was raised on a ranch south of Lusk, WY on the East side of the Rawhide Buttes. The Texas Trail and the Cheyenne/Deadwood stage route both crossed the ranch leaving ruts as signatures of their passing in the late 1800s. The museum in Lusk exhibits one of the last stagecoaches that carried the gold and passengers to and from the gold fields of the Black Hills of South Dakota.

My career in ranching in Nebraska fostered my interest in the West and especially the cattle trails as the physical evidence of the impressions in the prairie were still visible after 100 years of grazing the virgin plains of Wyoming and Nebraska.

In 1989, I purchased a Newton farm wagon and team of horses, built a primitive chuckbox and participated in hundreds of parades, county fairs, cowboy poetry gatherings, weddings, golf tournaments and as many events as possible to promote the history of the livestock industry, cattle trails, chuckwagons and cowboys. Cooking was a part of many of the events.

As years of promoting livestock industry passed, I became interested in accuracy of the events, growth of the “American West” and the causation of events that affected this unbelievable unique period of time and place in world history. I now use the chuckwagon as my prop to share the “true” life of the cowboy, longhorn cattle, chuckwagon and cattle drives from Texas to the Northern Plains.