Caesar may have been history’s first recorded tailgater.
The Romans were good at a lot of things: building amazing monuments, conquering distant lands, political intrigue, and knowing how to throw a really awesome (and toga-filled) party. Some credit Caesar with being the first to tailgate, right out of the back of a chariot. The story goes that after a particularly crazy chariot race, the leader opened up the Coliseum, inviting people in to enjoy food, drink, and various types of entertainment. Wine, wild fowl, and fights to the death may have been a bit more of the standard fare at these early get-togethers than it is today, but the spirit of the events is quite similar, leading to some giving Caesar credit for getting the tailgating ball rolling, though it wouldn’t really take off for another couple of millennia.
People actually tailgated at Civil War battles.
A battlefield probably isn’t the place that most of us would want to hang out on the sidelines of (even to cheer on our side), but early tailgaters didn’t let a little thing like stray bullets get in their way. At the Battle of Bull Run in 1861, Union Army supporters showed up with some food and drinks and loudly cheered on the soldiers while hanging out in their carriages. They sang fight songs, took bets on how long the battle would take, and even caused a traffic jam when the battle was over — all classic tailgating practices.
Some of the first tailgate parties were held for Ivy League teams.
It makes sense that the Ivy League would be home to the earliest tailgating, given that these East Coast schools were some of the first to be established in America. Some believe that tailgating dates back to the very first football game ever played between Rutgers and Princeton in 1869, when fans traveled to the game by horse-drawn carriage, grilling sausages at the “tail-end” of the horse and spawning the term “tailgating.” Of course, not everyone agrees with this theory, and there are many competing claims for being the originator of tailgating.
The most practiced tailgater in the nation may be super fan Joe Cahn.
Often called “The Commish,” Kahn has visited every NFL stadium, 125 college stadiums, and 9 NASCAR tracks during his 15 years of tailgating across the nation. In 1996, Cahn sold his business, the Louisiana School of Cooking, and took to the road to promote tailgating, serving up over 325 pots of his famous jambalaya as he enjoyed over 800 different tailgating parties.
The idea for eating out of the back of a car may have started in 1866 with Charles Goodnight.
This Texas rancher and entrepreneur noticed that the cowboys he employed needed a way to eat on the road, so he transformed a U.S. Army Studebaker wagon into a mobile kitchen. There, hungry ranch hands could get their chow, relax, and socialize after a long day of working.