Western photographer and novelist Dane Coolidge reported in 1912 that he'd heard endless verses of a bawdy parody of "Casey Jones" among Arizona cowboys early that year. In fact, it was almost "the only tune they hummed." Each verse, Coolidge wrote, was "fouler than the last."

Botkin's "Treasury of American Folklore" observes that bawdy versions of the song were well known to American soldiers in France in 1918.