The dramatically beautiful hills that surround Wimberley are doubly responsible for the creekside village’s charm. For while they provide a scenic backdrop and a remarkable vantage point for lovers of scenery today, they provided for decades an almost impenetrable shield from advancing civilization. The seclusion and slow progress that resulted can be largely credited for Wimberley’s “antique” small-town charm.

Some type of mobile kitchens probably existed before the Civil War, but it is a Texas rancher named Charles Goodnight who is credited with inventing the chuckwagon in 1866 for use on the long cattle drives that became the backbone of the Texas economy after the war. "Chuck" was a slang term for food, and chuckwagon food included items that were easy to preserve, such as salted meats, coffee, beans, and sourdough biscuits.