What do you think of when you think of the Wild West? Herds of bison as far as the eye can see? The gunfight at the O.K. Corral? The Plains Indians? What about cowboys herding cattle on the open range?

Generally the Wild West dates from the end of the Civil War in 1865, but when the Wild West ends is much debated. Some dates include the last stagecoach robbery (1916) or the admission of Oklahoma into the Union signalling the end of Indian Territory, a designated land for displaced indigenous groups (1907). But most dates land in the 1880s and depend on an invention that you might see every day and rarely think twice about: barbed wire.

The Herd Quitter by C. M. Russell, 1897.

Examples of barbed wire developed and used in the late 1800s in Arizona Territory

If you wanted to fence in or enclose an area for livestock before 1870, you would need to build a solid fence out of wood, clay, or stone. These were heavy, cumbersome, and generally not available on the treeless Great Plains or arid Southwestern US. Barbed wire completely changed the landscape both socially and literally. Vast areas that would previously have been impossible to fence were enclosed to keep cattle in place. As the inventor of modern barbed wire Joseph Glidden boasted, “It takes no room, exhausts no soil, shades no vegetation, is proof against high winds, makes no snowdrifts, and is both durable and cheap.” Cowboys were no longer needed at the vast scale necessary before. The few remaining bison could no longer migrate. This simple invention led to a series of range wars called the Fence Cutting Wars.

An advertisement showing the benefits of barbed wire, late 19th century.

Fence Cutting Wars

Before barbed wire fences, cattle in the Western United States could move freely from one person’s land to another. Cattle brands played an important role in differentiating whose cows were whose, especially when herds would mix together while migrating. (The numbers are hard to fathom, as there were over 5 million heads of cattle wandering the range during this period.) People with smaller homesteads that could only support a few cows could let their cattle graze on larger swaths.

A cattle roundup in Colorado, c.1898.

During the 1880s and 1890s, larger cattle ranchers felt like their livestock was having to compete for good grazing and began to fence off their lands with the new wire fencing–sometimes against court orders. Smaller homesteaders were enraged and would frequently cut fences to allow cattle through. The cowboys who were being put out of work by the new enclosures would also cut fences. While some fence cutters were arrested and prosecuted, more often shootouts between landowners and fence cutters would lead to deadly results. The range wars were settled largely in favor of the landowners with fence cutting becoming a felony with mandatory jail time across the Southwest.

The Devil’s Rope

No one was more impacted by the invention of barbed wire than the Indigenous people or the West and Southwest. Not only did the new fencing keep cattle in, it also limited the range of roaming bison. Many of the nations had been nomadic, changing where they lived based on the season and movement of herds. With the enclosure of the West, this movement became impossible. The open range was no longer. The individual property rights of white landowners who had been newly granted the land from the U.S. government were prioritized practically and in court over the tribal nations who had lived there for centuries. The fencing in of the range aggravated already existing tensions between Native Americans and the homesteading interlopers leading to bloody conflicts and massacres like the one at Wounded Knee in 1890.

Watercolor painting Waiting for Chinook (Last of 5,000) by C.M. Russell, 1887.

The Big Die Up

In the winter between 1886 and 1887, ranch owners in Montana had heard of harsh winter conditions leading to starving cattle in other parts of the state. They asked a cowhand named C.M. Russell to check on the cattle and he returned with a haunting sketch of a starving longhorn bull surrounded by hungry wolves. The piece was published widely and came to represent the Big Die Up.

Previously the huge herds of cattle would wander, led by cowboys for years as they were fattened up and then driven to railroad depots where they would be shipped to market on the new railroad lines. The cattle would be allowed to roam and could follow their instincts to warmer areas as winter approached. The fenced off range meant that this was now impossible. Drift fences were made to control the flow of animals, some of which were 200 miles long. The combination of the abnormally harsh winter of 1886-1887, the newly-installed fences, and the overgrazing of certain areas led to deadly conditions. Hundreds of thousands of cattle died from starvation or exposure to harsh winds and snow. Future president Teddy Roosevelt who owned cattle impacted by the Big Die Up remarked in a letter to a friend, "Well, we have had a perfect smashup all through the cattle country of the northwest. The losses are crippling.” Once the warm Chinook winds arrived to melt the snow, cowboys were sent out to assess the remains of the herds and were often directed to harvest the hides in order to recoup some of the overwhelming losses.

Putting up barbed wire fence on the Milton farm at El Indio, Texas, 1939.

Did you know about the history of barbed wire? What surprised you most?