The Devil's Rope

In 1875, 2,840,000 pounds of barbed-wire were sold in the United States.

It was the Native American's, oddly enough, that nicknamed barbed-wire, "The Devil's Rope."  It was certainly bad enough that the white man was shoving them off of their lands and forcing one tribe upon another, but that barbed-wire!  It made it next to impossible for the nomadic tribes to continue with their ancient life style!

The first patents for this uniquely American invention were issued in 1873 and 1874.  (Just a year later 2,840,000 pounds of it were sold in the U.S.!)   Those patents were issued ten years after the original concept was presented as a wooden rail fence with barbs sticking out.   The most successful design was created by Joseph Glidden of DeKalb, Illinois who had been encouraged by his wife (way to go, girl!!) because she wanted to use it around her vegetable garden to keep the critters out.  They called it the "thorny fence."

Because its design was so simple, a wire barb locked (keyword: locked) onto a double strand of wire, and because he had even figured out a way to mass-produce the stuff, Glidden's patent, literally and figuratively, became known as "The Winner."  Here we are, almost 150 years later, and it's still the most familiar style of barbed wire!

Pretty cool, you say?  Well, sort of.  The problem with being almost the only barbed-wire being used was that it could be (and was!) stolen, and there would be no way to prove who it really belonged to.  The railroads were required to fence off their rail lines, and, like today, most folks think to themselves, what the heck, those big corporations can afford to replace the wire, and off they'd go with miles and miles of it.  The entire lengthy of a rail line was impossible to police!  The railroad's solution was to corner the market on a particular style of wire and at least make it easier to identify as theirs.

With the use of barbed wire, "wide open spaces became less wide, less open, and less spacious, and ... barbed wire became an accepted symbol of control, transforming space to place and giving new meaning to private property."  (www.archives.gov) The ranchers first filed land-use petitions, but the governments realized that farmers brought families, and families meant permanent settlements that would grow into tax-paying villages and towns and cities.  In places like Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming, range wars ensued between farmers and ranchers.

The Devil's Rope was as influential to settling the American West as six-shooters, the telegraph, windmills and the steam engine.