"Home on the Range" Log Cabin

Location:  From the Jct. of Hwy K-8 and Hwy US 36 near Athol go North 8 miles on Hwy K-8 then 1 mile West at marked turn off.

Nearest Towns:  Athol, Smith Center, Kensington

If you visit this Kansas attraction, and it seems like you are in someone's backyard, it's because you will be.  But the story about the cabin and the official state song of Kansas gets more interesting than that.

"My Western Home" which would later come to be known as "Home on the Range" and become the state song of Kansas, was written in this modest cabin in the autumn of 1872 .  It was written by Dr. Brewster Higley M.D. a talented doctor who played the violin and wrote poetry.  He was originally from Ohio and had lost his first three wives to illness or injury.  Apparently his fourth marriage to the widow McPherson in 1866 didn't go too well.  The doctor took to drink and after sending the children from this marriage to live with relatives, headed west for parts unknown.  He ended up in Smith County, Kansas in 1871 where he filed for the homestead on which the small cabin now sets on the banks of Beaver Creek .  The talented doctor soon became respected in the frontier community, but would not discuss his past.  By the summer of 1872, he was ready to build his cabin out on the claim.   Aided by a keg of beer that had been carefully lowered into a nearby spring the day before, a crew of twenty or so neighbors held a house-raising on July 4 of 1872 .

It was later in the fall of that year that the doctor wrote the words to "My Western Home".  The paper on which it was written was stuffed away in a book .  It was accidentally discovered by a patient the next year who encouraged Dr. Higley to put it to music.  With the aid of a friend, and after a few minor changes, the poem became the popular "Home on the Range" which is today known around the world.  The doctor's marriage to his fourth wife was dissolved in February of 1875 by the woman he had left behind in Indiana.  This was lucky for the doctor, since he married his fifth and final wife in Kansas on March 8 of the same year.

On June 30, 1947, "Home on the Range" was named the official state song of Kansas by an act of the legislature.  By this time the old cabin was pretty much run down.  With the renewed interest in the song and the cabin where it was written, the Smith Center Rotary Club and others restored the cabin in the late 1940's.  The daughters of the American Revolution have also erected a stone monument at the location (small photo at right).

It is through the generosity of Mr. and Mrs. Rust that this place of historic interest is open to the public.

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