It was the first, and many teenagers of the 1970s and 80s would argue it was the best fast-food restaurant in Riverton. The Covered Wagon, home of the Wagon Master burger, chicken fingers, and their signature delight, the Wagon Wheel, was an icon on the west side of North Federal for 20 years.
Dennis and Dorothy Winsell were school teachers. They taught in Idaho for a couple of years from 1965 to 1967. Dennis also coached football and basketball.
The young couple moved to Mill Creek to teach in 1968. Dennis coached basketball and track as well as teaching.
In 1971, Dorothy’s brother Bob Jensen and his cousin Ron Jensen came to Riverton to build the Covered Wagon.
“The three of us built it with the help of another young man,” Dennis said. “Mainly they built it and I watched, helped, and got in the way.”
Bob and Ron stayed in a vacant teacherage at Mill Creek while they constructed the Covered Wagon.
They opened the Covered Wagon in the summer of 1971 but kept their teaching jobs. Dennis taught for another five years and Dorothy for another eight.
“We’d run over on the weekends. After school I’d take off, make it there by 5, and stay late,” Dennis said. “Lots of nights I had to finagle stuff around with practice. It takes a lot of time.”
The Covered Wagon was a trendsetter, as one of the first drive-through restaurants in state.
“The three of us built that one and built another one in 1971 in Gordon, Nebraska. Ron owned that one,” Dennis said. “Ron passed a year ago. Donna ran it until one and a half years ago. They sold it to a younger couple and it’s still operating. It is phenomenal. They open the doors at 9 a.m. and have lines until 9 at night.”
“I remember their hamburgers had relish on them. They were so good,” Kimmy Street-Garcia said.
Dennis and Dorothy had those same lines on North Federal in Riverton. Part of the thrill of eating out was driving through the covered entryway of the Covered Wagon.
“I loved going there when I was in junior high and high school. I loved their sub sandwich and it was a lot of fun going underneath the covered wagon,” Carolyn Shippen Nelson said.
It quickly became a popular Riverton High School destination at lunch and a popular place for teenagers to stop before heading to the West or Knight Drive-Ins.
“Spent a lot of lunch time there in high school. The Wagon Master was awesome,” Terry Plumb said.
The concept was a success, and they began to franchise.
“We built one in Douglas across from the Douglas Speedway. We lived in campers on site while we built it in the winter. It was miserable. We had it until 1988, sold it to a couple, she was our manager. Randy and Cathy Cox were the owners. They sold out after a few years and went into the furniture business.”
They built their third Covered Wagon in Deadwood, South Dakota in 1975.
“I wish I still had that one, any one of them would be a gold mine,” Dennis said. “We built it for Bob Jensen’s mom and dad. They had just retired in Lead, SD. He found that retiring into a restaurant wasn’t much of a retirement, so we bought it right away.”
They only had problems with one restaurant, this one in Hot Springs, South Dakota.
“We had that for two years and couldn’t make it work. Management was a real problem,” Dennis said. “The guy bought an old building in Hot Springs and tried to convert it. We bought it to keep him from getting a divorce.”
In 1975 they built one in Cody for Lyle Warner.
“Ron and I were involved in getting it going. It ran successfully until the early 1990s,” Dennis said. “He built another one in Powell.”
At one time Dennis and Dorothy owned Covered Wagons in Riverton, Douglas, Deadwood, and Hot Springs. His brother-in-law Bob owned another one in Belle Fourche and Dorothy’s cousin Ron ran the one in Gordon, Nebraska. Aside from the one in Hot Springs, they were all the same design.
“They were open late when I was in high school. Four stoner specials, please. Hot apple turnover à la mode, delicious!” Jim Strickler said.
The memory that thousands of people from Riverton, Lander, Ethete, Fort Washakie, Hudson, Shoshoni, Pavilion, and Dubois have is of the food and the fast, friendly service.
“Our Wagon Wheels were a batter-dipped hamburger,” Dennis said. “We had the recipe from my grandmother and figured out a way to make it work.”
Chicken nuggets, strips, and fingers are now available at every fast-food and traditional restaurant in America. In 1971, they were a new menu item.
“We called them chicken fingers, batter-dipped breast strips,” Dennis said. “We couldn’t keep enough batter for both. We ended up buying chicken strips. We were the first ones to have a batter-dipped chicken finger.”
Ubiquitous today, chicken strips were a treat in the early 1970s.
“They were the first to serve chicken tenders. My sister worked there,” Sam Brown said.
They ran the business 12 hours a day, 360 days a year for 18 years.
“We had family obligations in South Dakota, I didn’t have much choice but to turn it over to a manager,” Dennis said. “We hired a worker who was with us for eight years as manager. It didn’t work out. He managed for one and a half years and we had to make some changes.”
They sold the Covered Wagon Drive-In and the adjacent Covered Wagon Trailer Park in 1992.
“We sold it to the Fredricksons from Worland,” Dennis said. “He and his wife ran it for five or six more years as the Pony Express.”
They tried to extend the franchise to a few more locations, including Gillette, Lander, Dickinson, North Dakota, and Laurel, Montana.
“Business was great. We bought property in Gillette in 1985–86. We got the land, got the metal building purchased, then the lady we bought it from died, it went through escrow,” Dennis said. “They chained our building to the concrete and we weren’t allowed to do anything with it. We lost the building and the land in the process.”
They couldn’t complete the deal in Dickinson.
In Lander, they had an ideal location, where McDonald’s is today at the main highway junction.
“We tried to get one in Lander. One guy had all the land tied up,” Dennis said. “We couldn’t make a deal.”
One of the women who worked for Dennis and Dorothy in Riverton was from Laurel. She said she would manage the restaurant, but once again, they couldn’t complete a real estate deal.
The Winsells hired hundreds of workers over their 20-year run at the Covered Wagon.
“Our staff was absolutely fantastic. We don’t think we ever fired anybody,” Dennis said. “We had people that didn’t show up and gave us notice. We didn’t have perfect employees, but they took care of their areas.”
The employees admired the dedication of the owners.
“My first job in the late 70s. So many wonderful memories. Dorothy and Dennis were the best employers. They taught me a lot about work ethic. Either you want to work or you don’t. I skipped my weekend plans and went to work,” Cindy Lou Snider said.
“I did a short stint there. I loved it and the food,” Connie Gantenbein said.
Many people worked at the Covered Wagon for a long time.
“We had a lot of people who were with us 15, 18, 20 years,” Dennis said. “Ron in Gordon had a lady for well over 40 years.”
They kept the original design but repainted it in a different style around 1980.
“I loved going there when I was a kid with my mom. Burger and fries in the early 70s. I was offended when they painted it later on, lol,” Tena Osborne said.
The working arrangement had Dennis up front taking orders. They had a grill cook and another cook at the fryer. People in the back took care of the drinks.
The drinks at the Covered Wagon were legendary. Not the standard soda fountain drinks, but their malts and shakes.
“We had the first fresh fruit malts and shakes,” Dennis said. “Banana milkshakes. We put pieces, chunks, of strawberries and bananas so people could find something a little chunky in there.”
One of the perks for late-shift workers was taking home extra burgers and fries that didn’t sell. The Wagon Wheels were always sold out.
“I worked there for a short time before I could drive, and my brothers would fight over who got to pick me up at the end of the day so they could have hamburgers that didn’t sell. Yummy,” Karen Wardner said.
Halfway to Lander, in Hudson, a man began making cartwheels, a deep-fat-fried, batter-dipped burger.
“A guy in Hudson started the cartwheel. We bought some from him, but he couldn’t keep up with our demand,” Dennis said. “He got with a bigger distributor and couldn’t keep the state health inspector satisfied. They shut him down.”
The Hudson business supplied cartwheels to a rival drive-in on the top of Main Street, the Dash In, for a while, but Jim Dabney, owner of the West Drive-In and the Dash In, started making cartwheels from his own recipe.
The eternal debate between teenagers of Coke vs. Pepsi and Ford vs. Chevy was extended to the cartwheel and the Wagon Wheel. Both were delicious, but kids had their perceived favorites.
“The cartwheel became commercial,” Dennis said. “We made our own handmade Wagon Wheels.”
For two decades, Dennis and Dorothy had a staff of 10 to 15 workers per day, two shifts, 360 days a year.
The Wagon Wheel was only prepared in Riverton.
“We let the managers have their way and most of them didn’t want to fool around with them,” Dennis said. “If I ever had a chance to do it again, I’d require them to carry Wagon Wheels.”
Speed is always the hallmark of fast food, or at least it should be.
“We wanted to get the people through as quick as we could, so we limited the menu,” Dennis said. “In Gordon, they put everything she wanted to sell on the menu. The people just sat in their cars and waited.”
Dennis and Dorothy arrived in Riverton’s boom times. The town was growing. The energy economy was vibrant and there was a need for a restaurant like the Covered Wagon.
“We had good luck with what we had. We hit it,” Dennis said. “Riverton was booming. In the 80s we still had uranium, gas, and oil. We hit it at the right time. It was fantastic living.” If you were around Fremont County in the 1970s or 80s, you’ll remember it as a fantastic time as well. It would be a little more fantastic if you could get just one more taste of a Wagon Master burger or get your fingers greasy with a delightful Wagon Wheel.