Barbed Wire: The Fence That Changed the West

How could an ordinary fence shape a nation's history? Before the 1870s, much of the American West was an uninterrupted expanse of plains, where native tribes followed buffalo herds for hundreds of miles and cowboys ran cattle wherever water and grass led them. After the Homestead Act of 1862, settlers pouring into the West to stake their claims found that farming was not easy in cattle country, where the Law of the Open Range dictated that the needs of the herds-and their owners-came first. Then, seemingly overnight, everything changed. The invention and mass production of barbed wire made it possible for homesteaders to fence off millions of acres, creating a violent clash of cultures.

Joanne S. Liu is a Texas-based freelance writer who has published articles in The History Channel Magazine, Learning Through History Magazine, and History Magazine, among others. After receiving a bachelor of arts from Brown and a law degree from Boston University, she practiced law in New England, where she specialized in tracing ownership of real estate back to the 1700s. She now resides in Houston, Texas, with her husband and daughter.