“Home On The Range” Has Leadville Roots

Mountain Music: The Leadville Connection

By Kathy Bedell © Leadville Today

When it comes to music, Leadville has other mountain towns beat in some unusual ways. It’s not the about drawing in popular headliners, the chart-toppers. And it’s not about the big, impressive venues. No, when it comes to mountain music it’s always the Leadville Connection that runs through the melodies and lyrics. So in honor of all Leadville musicians, here’s the story of one of America’s favorite ditties – “Home On The Range” – and its Leadville Connection.

“Oh give me a hill,

And the ring of a drill!

Oh the rich silver ore

In the ground!

Where there’s always the proof,

With a run of the sluice

Where the bright yellow gold can be found!”

Sound familiar? It should. It’s one of the little-known verses to “Home on the Range,” an American trail song that has kept things moving along in the West for years. Beloved by many, it was President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s avid affection for the tune that made it an international sensation and to this day, one of every troubadour’s favorite sing-along songs.

While the origins and authors of the song have been long debated, Leadville Today has secured papers from “The Kansas Historical Quarterly” that may finally put the issue to rest.  Dr. Brewster M. Higley is often credited with the lyrics, based on his poem “My Western Home,” and the music attributed to his friend Daniel E. Kelley, however there is more official evidence that points to the contrary. And it’s time Leadville took back its rightful connection to this American classic.

In today’s music world, copyrights are fiercely protected and technology makes it easy for attorneys to shake down any violators faster than you can say iTunes. However, during the first part of the 20th century, as this lighthearted campfire tune was gaining immense popularity, the absence of the tune’s origin established a media free-for-all, with everyone taking full advantage of its royalty-free status.

A favorite sing-along with campers, “Home On The Range,” has its origins in Leadville. Photo: Leadville Today/David Hahn.

However, at the height of the song’s popularity, the attorneys descended in 1934 with the first copyright infringement lawsuit filed in New York, naming some 35 individuals.  Eventually, the defense of the lawsuit was taken over by the Music Publishers Protective Association (MPPA) which hired lawyer Samuel Moanfeldt to investigate the origins of the words and music.

The documentation of Moanfeldt’s  3-month journey, traveling nearly every state west of the Mississippi is fascinating. His interviews with poets and songwriters, newspaper reporters and any neighbors or kin willing to talk and share old photos and clippings is worthy of its own song.  Each person he spoke with during his investigation touched the melody or verse at some point, making it their own “Home on the Range,” as the song traveled throughout the American West.

It’s not hard to imagine Moanfedt singing the catchy tune as he traveled hundreds of miles on rails and trails to track down the true home to this range of melodies.  It would become the musical earworm he just couldn’t shake, whistling it over coffee in the morning and humming it quietly into another fading sunset.

However, it’s clear in Moanfeldt’s final report dated February 15, 1935, that his trail of discovery ends in the mining camp of Oro City, or what eventually became known as Leadville, our “Home on the Range!”

The music venues of their day, Leadville’s gambling and dance halls featured local musicians, some of whom wrote “Home on the Range” during their stay in America’s highest city!

It’s at this point in the story that fans are finally introduced to songwriters Bob Swartz, Bill McCabe, Bingham Graves and Jim Fouts, four inseparable companions. They were prospectors by day and musicians by night, playing local gambling and dance halls.  Their song is presently known as “Home on the Range” and is now verified as having its origin in Leadville, recorded as such on the Congressional Record of 1945.

In addition, that same year, the nationally known “tune detective,” confirmed those findings in an article which appeared in the Rotarian (Chicago):

In the middle 1880s a group of prospectors, headed by C.O. (“Bob”) Schwartz lived in a cabin which they called the Junk Lane Hotel in Leadville, Colorado. All musical, they fill their evenings with friendly and often improvised harmony. On a night early in 1885 they worked at a melody and set words to it, to create the song which the world now sings as “Home on the Range.”  They however called it “Colorado Home.”

Additionally, Spaeth’s article in the Rotarian continues, a letter from Bob Schwartz to his “Dear Folks” dated February 15, 1885 describes the event and gives the complete words and music which are almost identical with those of “Home On The Range” as it is known today.  There are slight differences in the melodic line and it was only later that the text acquired a definite cowboy slant. But the song is all there, in the faded yellow letter which Bob’s sister Mrs. Laura M. Anderson discovered among her belongings in 1930. . . . I have nothing yet that would cause me to desert the Swartz story.”

So there you have it, the Leadville Connection to one of everyone’s favorite sing-alongs: “Home On the Range.”  It should be in every local musician’s repertoire, along with the story of its Leadville origins!

Journalist Kathy Bedell owns The Great Pumpkin, LLC, a media company located in Leadville, Colorado which publishes LeadvilleToday.com and SaguacheToday.com. She may be reached at info@leadvilletoday.com