WHAT COFFEE REALLY WON THE WEST by Marisa Masterson

Last month, I wrote about tea. As I researched for that blog article, I ran into information about an unusual sort of Texas conflict. A war over coffee--

Coffee was so important to soldiers and frontiersmen
that some guns had coffee mills built into the stock.

Pioneers and frontiersmen depended on coffee. They craved the beverage and drank it at every meal. Julie Bier, one of the first pioneers to cross Death Valley, is quoted as saying, "Our coffee was a wonderful help and had that given out, I know we should have died."  (https://truewestmagazine.com/cowboy-coffee/) This was before our modern roasted and ground coffee that had a long shelf life.

Chuck Wagon Buffet

Cowboys also relied on coffee, preferring it barefooted (black). It was a standard item served from by chuck wagon, kept available constantly for the wrangles. One chuck wagon cook wrote that he used 175 pounds of beans every month. Ground beans were added to the previous pot's grounds until the pot. Something that was repeated until the pot couldn't hold anymore. 

At this time, the roasted coffee beans weren't available. The beans were sold green and then toasted in a skillet. One burned bean ruined the entire batch. But a new invention made possible this  battle to be the cowboy's favorite brand of the brew . A way to roast the beans and turn them during the process was invented. Then a man named John Arbuckle patented a recipe to coat the beans so they had a longer shelf life. (He used moss as one of the ingredients, believe it or not!)

In Texas, Arbuckles Ariosa coffee was known as the coffee that tamed the west. Coupons attached to each package were saved so that housewives could earn free items. (Twenty coupons earned a free apron.) Texans were devoted to their Arbuckles.

A coffee maker in San Francisco by the name of Folgers decided to win the hearts of Texans away from the Ariosa coffee. Folgers sent Frank Atha to Texas to set up an outlet there. Folgers was a much more expensive coffee than Arbuckles and Atha focused on that in his advertising campaign. Folgers' expensive Golden Gate Coffee was the one sold in Texas. Atha would travel around Texas in a wagon, giving away free samples to housewives. He limited the number of grocers who could carry the brand also, making it seem like a harder to buy item. That in itself made the popular Arbuckles seem more common and less desirable.

Atha did one more thing. He tried to convince Texans that Arbuckles was all about gimmicks. Folgers Coffee in Texas came with a slogan--No prize--no coupons--no crockery. All that came with Folgers was satisfaction.

So did it work? Folgers is the leading brand of ground coffee in the United states. Even so, to this day many older cowboys still think of Arbuckle's Ariosa blend as the original cowboy coffee. (https://www.arbucklecoffee.com/pages/history)  Folgers has won over everyone but the cowboys it seems.

https://www.amazon.com/Rubys-Westward-Hearts-Mail-Order-Brides-ebook/dp/B07YBK98P8

What's in Your Cup? by Abagail Eldan

We are all aware of the American love affair with coffee, and the reason coffee became so popular in the United States. Even those who hated history (and surely not any of the Sweet Americana Sweetheart readers would fall into that group! 😃), know of the Boston Tea Party that spawned the American Revolution. "'Tea must be universally renounced . . . and the sooner the better,' wrote John Adams, enroute to the first Continental Congress in 1774. Patriotic Americans agreed and embraced coffee as their favorite drink." source

And especially after the War of 1812, and still today, coffee reigned and reigns supreme. Americans consume more than (almost) THREE times the amount of tea, soda, and sparkling fruit juice COMBINED. Source

I've loved coffee since a child. My grandmother had a collection of miniature cups, and one of my earliest memories is of her pouring coffee (probably more milk than coffee) into one of the tiny cups so I could drink coffee, too. Grandmothers are wonderful, aren't they? Also, another strong memory from childhood was the aroma released from the newly opened can of GI coffee my parents purchased from the commissary. 

Yes, it was like a scent from heaven!

Just like us, folks heading West were great coffee lovers. Coffee gives us a jolt of energy, invigorates us, as no other drink seems to do, and the people needed that extra jolt as they encountered daily struggles and heartache in the new frontier. 

Cowboys enjoyed their coffee as well. On cattle drives, when alertness was valued, especially since cowboys could be in the saddle for up to sixty hours at a time, the cook kept a three- to five-gallon tinned iron pot going most of the time. Fresh grounds were added to the old until the pot was filled, and then the cook would have to dump it and begin again. 

One cook reported using over 175 pounds of coffee beans in one month. Yes, beans which had to be ground. Today, coffee snobs grind their own beans for better-tasting coffee--back then, it was a necessity. 

And before the 1860s, people had to roast the beans themselves by using a shallow pan in the oven or something similar to a bedwarmer over the fire on the hearth. 

The Arbuckle Brothers, wholesale groceries, were the first to package and sell coffee (their most famous brand was Ariosa) in the West. Here's an interesting paragraph from "Cowboy Coffee":

Many ranch cooks bought Ariosa in 150-pound cloth sacks, which could be made into dish towels, aprons, bandages, and so forth. Even more versatile were Ariosa’s wooden shipping crates. The large crates, which held 100 one-pound bags, were made of sturdy Maine fir because they had to withstand shipment over many miles of rough road. After the crates had been carefully opened and emptied, the wood was used to build furniture, shelves, storage bins, chicken coops, and the like. Sometimes a crate was recycled as a crib for a baby or as a coffin when an in-fant died. The wood from several crates could be nailed to-gether for an adult’s coffin. Occasionally, a settler man-aged to col-lect enough crates to add a room onto his cabin. Arbuckle’s smaller shipping crates, which held 25 one-pound bags, were used for tool chests, wagon boxes, wood boxes, panniers, and such.

Arbuncle's coffee reigned supreme for a number of years until Folgers came along to successfully compete. 

And so I must ask... What's in your cup? If you are like me, and the cowboys of lore, it's the hearty, robust drink we love so much--coffee.

Visit Abagail Eldan's Facebook Page!

In the Brokken Road series, we often have scenes depicting the drinking of coffee or the lack thereof. Here's one from Brokken Redeemed:

It was Calvin Meyers. “Good morning, Mr. Hale. The sheriff sent me to deliver a message.” Calvin peered around Chance.

“What are you doing?” Chance asked irritably. He had not even had his first cup of coffee and wasn’t up for chitchat.

Calvin smiled up at him and raised his eyebrows. “I was looking for Mrs. Hale. I heard you and Miss Deborah tied the knot.”

Chance frowned at him. “She’s indisposed. What does the sheriff want?”

Calvin got very still and focused on a spot on the door frame near Chance’s head. “She said to inform you the circuit judge will be in the conference room at the bank at two o’clock sharp. You and Miss Deborah… I mean, Mrs. Hale, are to be there.” He looked down at his boots when he spoke his next words. “Said if she had to come after you, you’d be in a sorry mess.”

Chance gritted his teeth and spoke through a clenched jaw. “Tell the sheriff we will be there.”

He closed the door in Calvin’s face and then felt a little ashamed. It wasn’t Calvin’s fault. He was only the messenger.