Blue View – The Devil’s Rope

The ubiquitous barbed wire

“Each homestead needed about 5-7 miles of fences. There was the three-mile perimeter fence. Then there were the internal fences to keep the cattle out of the wheat and the hogs out of the vegetables. For every mile of fence, one needed to cut and haul some 1100 posts. From the first Fall through to the following Spring and beyond, the new arrivals lived and breathed fencing.” from Badlands-An American Romance by Jonathan Raban.

Who could pass on the Devil’s Rope Museum?

When we discovered that the Devil’s Rope Museum in McLean Texas was only about 150 miles out of our way, we just couldn’t pass it up. How could we possibly miss seeing the “largest collection of barbed wire and fencing tools in the world”? Actually, as is often the case, we were pleasantly surprised when this museum turned out to be quite well done and interesting.

A Little Barbed Wire History

When President Lincoln signed the Homestead Act in 1862, anyone over the age of twenty-one could claim 160 acres of land in the great western frontier. If the homesteader lived on the land, built a house, worked the land for a minimum of five years, and paid the $18 registration fee, the land became theirs. What a deal! Land – essentially free for the taking! Tens of thousands of hardy souls headed west to take the government up on the offer.

The reality, however, differed greatly from the dream. Life was hard on the prairie. There weren’t the great forests of the east, which provided wood for fuel, fences, and buildings. Instead, crude homes were built of sod, and fuel was dry buffalo chips when they could be found. Fences were needed to keep buffalo and free-range livestock from trampling the homesteaders’ crops as well as to mark property boundaries, but without wood, they were difficult to build. Cattle and buffalo would walk right through a wire fence. It was possible to build fences of cactus and thorn bushes, but it takes years for the fence to grow enough to be effective. And in case you, like me, didn’t know, 160 acres of land is a rectangle, with a half-mile on each side, so each homesteader needed to build two miles of fence – no trivial task.

Barbed wire proved to be the answer. It was stronger than normal wire fencing, and cattle soon learned to stay away from the sharp barbs attached to the wire.

Barbed wire was first invented in France in 1860, but the first U.S. patent wasn’t issued until 1867. More than 450 designs were patented after that, but it didn’t become practical until 1874 when Joseph Glidden came up with a design that could be machine produced. Using parts from an old grindstone and a coffee mill, he figured out a way to create a sharp wire barb, then wrap the barb around a strand of wire. He then twisted another strand of wire around the first, which doubled the strength of the wire and held the barb in place. He soon began mass-producing the wire, but he wasn’t without competition. There were many competing patents issued, and it’s estimated that between 1874 and the turn of the century as many as 150 companies were manufacturing barbed wire.

The homesteaders and sodbusters may have loved barbed wire, but not everyone else did. For decades, cattlemen had enjoyed the free use of the open range to feed their cattle, and to drive their cattle from their ranches to the railheads. All these newly fenced parcels of land prevented the cattle from grazing and often blocked access to springs and rivers that the cattle depended on. Similarly, Native Americans had, for centuries, also depended on the vast open spaces to hunt buffalo and other game that, in turn, provided food, clothing, shelter, and fuel.

Fence Cutting Wars

Fence cutters posing for a pic

Oftentimes, the cattlemen had no qualms about cutting the fences when they blocked access to water or cattle trails. As barbed wire became more common, local cattlemen would deliberately cut fences, sometimes miles of it. Some would wear masks and make night raids. Others even resorted to hiring “professional fence cutters”. Not surprisingly, the homesteaders didn’t take kindly to having their fences cut and crops trampled, and defended their property, resulting in violence and several deaths. But by 1893, barbed wire fences were widespread. Even the large ranchers realized that the days of the free-range were passing, and began buying large tracts of land and fencing them in.

Other Uses

Another use for barbed wire - although somewhat uncomfortable

Barbed wire was first used in the late 1800s by the Portuguese military during the Combat of Mogul, and in most wars since. In the trench warfare of WWI, huge entanglements of barbed wire were placed in front of the trenches to repel direct infantry attacks. Of course, it is also used to keep people in – as in prisons and POW camps, as well as to keep people and animals out.

One of the more interesting applications was as telephone lines. Alexander Graham Bell received his patent for the telephone in 1876, two years after Glidden’s barbed wire patent. Within a few years, many homes in urban areas were connected by phone lines, but it was too expensive for the new phone companies to run phone lines into rural areas. Innovative farmers discovered that if a telephone line was connected to a barbed wire fence, each farm could get phone service by connecting a phone to the fence with a length of smooth wire. Neighboring farmers would work together to run wire to the nearest telephone line, then make connections between the barbed wire fences and farm houses. Sometimes ten or twenty telephones would be wired together, all of which would ring with each call. Ring codes were agreed upon – maybe two short rings for the Smiths and two long rings meant the call was for the Jones. Of course, nothing prevented the Smiths from listening in on the Jones’ call.

I’ll probably pass on this as a hobby

There were hundreds of wire fence tools on display as well. Constructing a fence of barbed wire while keeping the wire taut and the fence posts straight isn’t easy and requires the right tools.

The museum also had an entire section on tools

BTW, the name “Devil’s Rope” was coined in the late 1800s. Injury to unwary livestock was called the work of the devil’. This evolved to the Devil’s Hatband, and eventually became the Devil’s Rope. Some sources attribute the name to Native Americans while others claim it was cattlemen who came up with it.