Who Actually Wrote the Code of the West?

We hear about the “Code of the West” all the time: keep your word, do your share, help someone in trouble, finish what you start, and take responsibility for yourself.

But who actually wrote it?

The answer is more complicated than the legend suggests.

In this episode of Way Out West, we trace the Code of the West from the working cattle culture of the nineteenth century through dime novels, Buffalo Bill, Owen Wister, Hollywood cowboys like Gene Autry and Roy Rogers, and the modern revival of cowboy ethics.

Along the way, we’ll separate the real customs of working cowboys from the mythology that grew around them, and discover how an unwritten occupational culture gradually became a set of moral rules.

Nobody sat down and wrote the Code of the West. The West lived some of it, storytellers shaped some of it, and later generations finally gave it a name and numbered the rules.

Transcript: For a full transcript of this episode, click on "Transcript"

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