Barbs, Bullets, and Blood: The 1880s Texas Barbed Wire Wars

In 1874 Joseph Glidden patented and manufactured the nation’s first barbed wire, and the next year Henry Sanborn came to Texas selling Glidden’s wire to cattlemen. Sales increased each year and in 1883 Sanborn sold Texas ranchers one million dollars’ worth of barbed wire, but free-range cattle advocates and homesteaders revolted against the barbed wire fences; more than half of Texas’s counties experiencing fence cutting. In the eyes of some Texans, barbed-wire fences stopped cattle drives,...