Home on the Range Cabin

Brewster Higley, an Ohio-born doctor who had practiced in Indiana, came to Smith County in the spring of 1871 to homestead a quarter section. After a winter in a dugout at Gaylord, on July 4, 1872, with neighbors, food and cold beer, finished his cabin on the bank of West Beaver Creek. He wrote a poem about the place, "My Western Home," and tucked it in a book. The foundation's account says a Smith Center man waiting for the doctor to treat a gunshot wound found it in 1873 and told him to print it. It ran in the Smith County Pioneer that year and in the Kirwin Chief in 1874.

Dan Kelley of Gaylord set it to music and gave it to Judge John Harlan's family band, who added the refrain that gave it its title. In 1934 an Arizona couple who claimed they had written it as "My Arizona Home" sued NBC and publishers, and the song went off the air until Samuel Moanfeldt, a lawyer for the defense, traced it to Smith County and proved that Higley wrote the words and Kelley the tune. Kansas made it the state song on June 30, 1947.

Pete and Ellen Rust, who lived and farmed here from 1936, turned down two large offers to move the cabin once its history was proved, and Ellen's trust gave the site to the Peoples Heartland Foundation, which restored the cabin in 2013. It is on the National Register, privately owned, and open daily from daylight to dark.