‘Home on the Range’: The Mystery and Adventure Surrounding Origin Story of Cowboy Work Song

Detail of "Cowboy Singing," circa 1892, by Thomas Eakins. Denver Art Museum, Colorado. Public Domain

In 1934, New York attorney Samuel Moanfeldt set out on a three-month journey. He made his way across the United States, traveling from Colorado to Pennsylvania, and eventually ending in Kansas.

He was hired by the Music Publishers Protective Association, an organization desperate to find out who originally wrote the song “Home on the Range.”