Mystery Mine cookhouse, Monte Cristo, Washington, ca

A cookhouse is a small building where cooking takes place. Often found at remote work camps, they complemented the

bunkhouse A bunkhouse is a barracks-like building that historically was used to house working cowboys on ranches, or loggers in a logging camp in North America. As most cowboys were young single men, the standard bunkhouse was a large open room with narro ...

and were usually found on

ranch A ranch (from es, rancho/Mexican Spanish) is an area of land, including various structures, given primarily to ranching, the practice of raising grazing livestock such as cattle and sheep. It is a subtype of a farm. These terms are most often ...

es that employed

cowboy A cowboy is an animal herder who tends cattle on ranches in North America, traditionally on horseback, and often performs a multitude of other ranch-related tasks. The historic American cowboy of the late 19th century arose from the '' vaquer ...

s, or

loggers Lumberjacks are mostly North American workers in the logging industry who perform the initial harvesting and transport of trees for ultimate processing into forest products. The term usually refers to loggers in the era (before 1945 in the Unite ...

in a

logging camp A logging camp (or lumber camp) is a transitory work site used in the logging industry. Before the second half of the 20th century, these camps were the primary place where lumberjacks would live and work to fell trees in a particular area. Many ...

. Prior to the 20th century, cookhouses were a feature of some private residences where the kitchen was a separate building so the heat and smoke from cooking was kept away from the main residential building.

Types of cookhouses

In North America, cookhouses were a standard feature of remote work sites, as the working men (e.g.

miners A miner is a person who extracts ore, coal, chalk, clay, or other minerals from the earth through mining. There are two senses in which the term is used. In its narrowest sense, a miner is someone who works at the rock face; cutting, blasting, ...

, etc.) needed large amounts of food for the strenuous work they performed. In logging camps, cooks were important to the morale of the workers. In some cases, workers would follow a cook to the camp where they were working each season. The cookhouse was one of the key buildings at any work site, along with the bunkhouse and

tool shed A shed is typically a simple, single-story roofed structure that is used for hobbies, or as a workshop in a back garden or on an allotment. Sheds vary considerably in their size and complexity of construction, from simple open-sided ones de ...

. The use of a cookhouse was not limited to resource extraction industries.

Travelling circus A circus is a company of performers who put on diverse entertainment shows that may include clowns, acrobats, trained animals, trapeze acts, musicians, dancers, hoopers, tightrope walkers, jugglers, magicians, ventriloquists, and unicycl ...

es also use a style of cookhouse to feed their workers and performers. In the 1930s, the

Civilian Conservation Corps The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a voluntary government work relief program that ran from 1933 to 1942 in the United States for unemployed, unmarried men ages 18–25 and eventually expanded to ages 17–28. The CCC was a major part of ...

worked in many remote areas, like the

Malheur National Forest The Malheur National Forest is a United States National Forest, National Forest in the U.S. state of Oregon. It contains more than in the Blue Mountains (Pacific Northwest), Blue Mountains of eastern Oregon. The forest consists of Great Basin ...

in the

Ochoco Mountains The Ochoco Mountains are a mountain range in central Oregon in the United States, located at the western end of the Blue Mountains. They were formed when Permian, Triassic, and Jurassic rocks were slowly uplifted by volcanic eruptions to form t ...

of eastern

Oregon Oregon () is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of it ...

. The

Allison Ranger Station The Allison Guard Station is a Forest Service compound consisting of eight rustic buildings located in the Malheur National Forest in the Ochoco Mountains of eastern Oregon. It was originally built as a district ranger station for the Snow Moun ...

was expanded with two ranger residences, a fire warehouse, a gas house, a garage, a generator shed, and a cookhouse. Large institutions, like Ireland's

Sligo Gaol Sligo Gaol or Sligo Prison, () is a former prison located in Sligo, County Sligo, Ireland, which was open from 1823 to 1959. Construction The prison sits on an site and was designed to hold 200 inmates in a polygon-shaped building, with the Go ...

, also had a cookhouse to serve the needs of the institution.

Residential usage

In the

Southern United States The Southern United States (sometimes Dixie, also referred to as the Southern States, the American South, the Southland, or simply the South) is a geographic and cultural region of the United States of America. It is between the Atlantic Ocean ...

, antebellum

plantations A plantation is an agricultural estate, generally centered on a plantation house, meant for farming that specializes in cash crops, usually mainly planted with a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. The ...

, like the Archibald Smith Plantation or the

Sion Hill estate Sion Hill is a settlement on the island of Saint Croix, in the United States Virgin Islands. History The Sion Hill estate, a former sugarcane plantation, was the economic center of the area. The stone Danish colonial era plantation house, windmi ...

, had a cookhouse separate from the main house to keep the main house from overheating. An example is the Condit Family house in New Jersey which had an unattached cookhouse. In

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...

, a common feature in homes prior to the 20th century was to have a cookhouse separate from the residence. With time and newer technologies this has changed with the kitchen being brought into the house.

Military usage

A military version of the cookhouse is the

galley A galley is a type of ship that is propelled mainly by oars. The galley is characterized by its long, slender hull, shallow draft, and low freeboard (clearance between sea and gunwale). Virtually all types of galleys had sails that could be used ...

, the compartment of a

ship A ship is a large watercraft that travels the world's oceans and other sufficiently deep waterways, carrying cargo or passengers, or in support of specialized missions, such as defense, research, and fishing. Ships are generally distinguished ...

train In rail transport, a train (from Old French , from Latin , "to pull, to draw") is a series of connected vehicles that run along a railway track and Passenger train, transport people or Rail freight transport, freight. Trains are typically pul ...

, or

aircraft An aircraft is a vehicle that is able to fly by gaining support from the air. It counters the force of gravity by using either static lift or by using the dynamic lift of an airfoil, or in a few cases the downward thrust from jet engines ...

where food is cooked and prepared for consumption in the

mess The mess (also called a mess deck aboard ships) is a designated area where military personnel socialize, eat and (in some cases) live. The term is also used to indicate the groups of military personnel who belong to separate messes, such as the o ...

. In the

Eastern Cape The Eastern Cape is one of the provinces of South Africa. Its capital is Bhisho, but its two largest cities are East London and Gqeberha. The second largest province in the country (at 168,966 km2) after Northern Cape, it was formed in ...

province of

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...

, north of

Port Elizabeth Gqeberha (), formerly Port Elizabeth and colloquially often referred to as P.E., is a major seaport and the most populous city in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. It is the seat of the Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality, Sou ...

, the town of

Cookhouse A cookhouse is a small building where cooking takes place. Often found at remote work camps, they complemented the bunkhouse and were usually found on ranches that employed cowboys, or loggers in a logging camp. Prior to the 20th century, cookh ...

may have gotten its name from a small stone house used for shelter and cooking by troops camping on the bank of the

Great Fish River The Great Fish River (called ''great'' to distinguish it from the Namibian Fish River) ( af, Groot-Visrivier) is a river running through the South African province of the Eastern Cape. The coastal area between Port Elizabeth and the Fish Riv ...

Gallery

File:Cookhouse interior, unidentified logging camp, Pacific Northwest, ca 1900 (INDOCC 192).jpg, Cookhouse interior, unidentified

Pacific Northwest The Pacific Northwest (sometimes Cascadia, or simply abbreviated as PNW) is a geographic region in western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Though ...

, circa 1900 File:Totara Estate, Mens Quarters & Cookhouse.jpg, Men's quarters and cookhouse at Totara Estate File:The Ordnance Chief Officer's Cookhouse, Henriville, Boulogne (24703850058).jpg, The Ordnance Chief Officer's Cookhouse, Henriville, Boulogne, circa 1917 File:NJ Cumberland County Captain Edward Compton House 0005.jpg, Reconstructed cookhouse at the Captain Edward Compton House File:Lumber jacks, 1917 - 15664637774.jpg, Canadian lumberjacks in 1917, photo by Reuben Sallows

References

External links

*{{wiktionary-inline, cookhouse Kitchen Building types