author
Arthur Chapman
1873–1935
A newspaper columnist and cowboy poet, this early 20th-century writer helped shape a popular image of the American West. He is best remembered for “Out Where the West Begins,” a poem that carried his plainspoken, frontier style to a wide audience.
2 Audiobooks
Rustlers beware!
by Arthur Chapman
Mystery Ranch
by Arthur Chapman
About the author
Born in Rockford, Illinois, in 1873, Arthur Chapman built his career as a journalist before becoming widely known as a poet and author. He worked in newspapers in Chicago and later in Colorado, where his writing became closely tied to western life and regional identity.
Chapman is most often associated with cowboy poetry, a style that mixed humor, sentiment, and a strong sense of place. His best-known poem, Out Where the West Begins, became especially popular and helped fix his name to the mythology of the American West.
Along with poetry and newspaper columns, he also wrote books, including work on Colorado history. He died in 1935, but his writing still stands as a lively example of how journalism and verse once met in the storytelling culture of the West.