picked this book up in Pagosa Springs, Co and was eager to read it, Most readers would not find it interesting at all, But I did because I had taught Shane for so many year and the changes barbed wire was making in the West were a part of that book.
I would loved to have had this book then, Not anything very exciting you can say about barbed wire, but this mere twisting of a small piece of wire had big economic impacts, changed the distribution of the country's population, and contributed the the fading of cowboys.
An extremely well told story of the invention of barbed wire and its interrelationship to land grants of the westward expansion, the coming industrial revolution, the post civil war economy, the cattle industry, and the railroad industry.
Throw in monopolies, politics and cut throat entrepreneurship for a well balanced look at subject rarely mentioned yet transformative in US history.
Since I was a child I was interested in the barbed wire fencing that cuts and divides the rural landscape, I picked this book up at a western historical museum and was glad to finally have some answers to why barbed wire dissects the frontier.
Good read very informative. Barbed Wire is an easytoread
history of the role of fencing in the settlement of the American West, Both native Americans and cattlemen depended on the wide open range, but homesteaders needed a way to protect their crops, Barbed wire became the relatively inexpensive solution in an area where lumber and stone were scarce, Fence cutting wars and other violence ensued and loss of range contributed to the near extinction of the bison and the end of the traditional Indian way of life.
Now, of course, there are fences everywhere, Before the mids, much of the American West was a vast
expanse of open plains, Native tribes followed buffalo herds
unimpeded for hundreds of miles, cowboys ran cattle wherever
water and grass led them, and the cattleman s Law of the Open
Range ruled.
All this changed when settlers pouring into the West
under the Homestead Act ofbrought with them the Eastern
farmer s concept of fencing in farms.
With the invention and mass
production of barbed wire in thes, it soon became possible
for homesteaders to fence off millions of acres of what was once
open range.
But barbed wire threatened the livelihood of the
cattlemen who depended on unfenced grasslands, and a clash of
cultures was inevitable.
In a style that will capture the interest of adult and teen readers,
Barbed Wire: The Fence That Changed the West reveals the surprisingly
critical role the invention of barbed wire played in the settling of
America.
From the legal battles over barbed wire patents to the
brutal fencing wars that erupted on the frontier and the ultimate
end of the open range, author Joanne Liu tells the fascinating story
of how a simple twist of wire transformed a country s landscape
and ushered in a new way of life.
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