Home on the Range

Home on the Range
Home on the Range was one of the cowboy's favorite songs as they drove their herds of longhorn cattle from Texas breeding grounds to the northern and western maturing grounds across the Great Plains. As cowboys would ride through the long and dreary nights, they would add verses to their songs to keep from falling asleep and help pass the time. Some records report that this song was first sung around 1867 by an African American chuck-wagon cook traveling along the Chisholm Trail. The trail stretched all the way from San Antonio, Texas to Abilene, Kansas. Other trails went to Wyoming and Montana, even Canada. Home on the Range is the official state song of Kansas.
Bibliography & Suggested Reading
Axelrod, Alan, Songs of the Wild West, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1991.
Boni, Margaret Bradford, Fireside Book of Folk Songs, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1947.
Dobie, J. Frank, Up the Trail from Texas. New York: Random House, 1955.
Felton, Harold W., Cowboy Jamboree: Western Songs and Lore, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1951.
Granfield, Linda, Cowboy: An Album. New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1994.
Krull, Kathleen, Gonna Sing My Head Off!, New York: Alfred A. Knopf , 1992.
Sackett, S. J., Cowboys and the Songs They Sang, William R. Scott, Inc., New York, 1967.
Copyright 1994 William and Lisa Liu. The video may be used for educational purposes with credit given to Sing an American Story; written permission would be nice. Any other use of the video must be requested by email to [e-mail].