from Wikipedia
The first known printing of this riddle was in 1847, in The Knickerbocker, a New York City monthly magazine:[1] ...There are ‘quips and quillets’ which seem actual conundrums, but yet are none. Of such is this: ‘Why does a chicken cross the street?[’] Are you ‘out of town?’ Do you ‘give it up?’ Well, then: ‘Because it wants to get on the other side!’ The joke had become widespread by the 1890s, when a variant version appeared in the magazine Potter's American Monthly:[2] Why should not a chicken cross the road? It would be a fowl proceeding