This is an IHeart podcast.

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Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosity's, A Production of IHeart Radio and Grim and Mild.

Our world is full of the unexplainable.

And if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.

Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosity's.

When you think about the American frontier, what images spring to mind?

Odds are, if given that prompt, one of the things you might imagine is a wagon train,

a line of covered carts meandering over the hills and valleys far off into the distance,

carrying whole families to their new homes.

It's obviously an image with some baggage, too.

It's impossible to separate the pioneer trails from the historic suffering that paved their way.

But just as crucial to the iconography of the American West is the cattle train,

waves and waves of livestock flanked by cowboys on horseback, keeping their herd together.

Even as railroads crisscross the countryside, cattle could not be easily transported along the rails, so cattlemen would have to drive their herds for countless miles from one

ranch or fort

to another.

During one of these cattle drives out of Texas, a rancher named Charles Goodnight had an idea.

It was 1866, one year after the end of the Civil War.

Goodnight, a former Texas ranger who had fought for the Confederacy, got hold of an old army wagon

and began to refit it for the cattle drive. He added shelving, cabinets, drawers, fire starters,

and a Dutch oven, along with plenty of storage for pots, pans, and other supplies. And he added

...