Some Red River history is not behind glass in a museum. On summer evenings at the top of Bobcat Pass, it is served hot, with cowboy coffee, while a singer picks up a guitar. The Cowboy Evening hosted by the Lewis family and crew at Bobcat Pass Wilderness Adventures, at 9,820 feet above town, has kept the old chuck wagon tradition alive for decades. By the summer of 2024 it had reached its 33rd season, starting that year on Tuesday, June 18 and running through Labor Day weekend.
The evening is built the way a trail crew would have done it. Guests gather around 5 p.m. for activities inside the barn and outside until the meal is served at 6 p.m., and the food is prepared from scratch that same day. Ranch biscuits are cooked fresh in Dutch ovens right before your eyes, a skill every good trail cook once needed, and cowboy coffee is poured the old way. Watching the biscuits bake is part of the show, not just a step in the kitchen.
The menu is hearty enough for a day in the mountains. Diners choose a hand-cut marinated ribeye steak, 12 to 16 ounces and cooked to order, or a grilled chicken breast in the Lewis Family Marinade. Alongside come cowboy beans, corn on the cob, a baked potato with the fixings, tea and lemonade, and, to finish, warm fresh-baked cinnamon rolls with more cowboy coffee. It is a chuck wagon dinner in the fullest sense: simple food, cooked well, shared with a crowd.
Music carries the heritage as much as the food does. In 2024 the featured performer was award-winning singer and songwriter Syd Masters, back for his 12th season at Cowboy Evening. Masters won the New Mexico Music Industry awards for Best Country CD and Best Song of the Year in 2014, composed and recorded the official state song of New Mexico, Under New Mexico Skies, and received the 2019 Western Heritage Wrangler Award for his contribution to Western culture through his music. His songs give the evening the sound of the West it celebrates.
That is why Cowboy Evening belongs in Red River living history. The town began as a mining camp, grew through ranching, sawmills and homesteads, and learned to welcome visitors without losing the working West that built it. At Bobcat Pass, at 1670 Highway 38 between Red River and Eagle Nest, the Lewis family still offers that welcome the old way, on most Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday nights through the summer, by reservation. Come hungry, watch the Dutch ovens, and listen. Some traditions survive because people keep cooking, singing and gathering for them, year after year.