Drift fences were disconnected sections of barb wire fencing put up to stop the movement of cattle from the north onto depleted grasslands to the south. Not intended as enclosures, cattlemen simply used the fence sections to help protect their increasingly crowded ranges by placing a barricade in the path of the unwanted cattle.
Fence-riders or line-riders set up camp along the barricades to drive the stray cattle back north. So effective were these drift fences that by 1885 they stretched across the entire Texas Panhandle and beyond. Unfortunately, the numbers of cattle allowed to drift down from the north soon became more than than the fence-riders could cope with.
Nowhere to go
When severe blizzards hit the plains in the Winter of 1885, the trouble began. The intense cold drove cattle to the south but when they hit the drift fences erected across the Panhandle they could not move forward. But they wouldn't go back into the blizzard either.
Called "the big die-up" the drift fences resulted in the death of thousands of heads of cattle along the Panhandle ranges alone. Stuck along the fences with the blizzard beating down on them the cattle froze in their tracks, piled against the unyielding barbed wire. Again in 1886-87 extreme cold drove cattle south right into the path of the drift fences. Again, thousands died. The barbed wire had lived up to the claims of salesman John W. Gates when he'd bragged a decade earlier:
- This is the finest fence in the world. Light as air. Stronger than whiskey. Cheaper than dirt. All steel, and miles long. The cattle ain't born that can get through it. Bring on your steers, gentlemen!
Unfortunately, the devastation wrought on the cattle industry after these back to back blizzards only served to strengthen arguments against the barbed wire beast.
Cattlemen began tearing down or breaking up much of the barbed wire barricades they'd erected. They blamed barb wire for the massive losses. These incidents only added fuel to the fire of the naysayers who continued to denounce barbed wire on humanitarian grounds. Opponents of the fence had long objected to the cruel nature of the fencing - the sharp barbs inflicted wounds on livestock that left untreated often resulted in pain, infection, and death.
An "obvious" solution
Manufacturers, seeing the coming backlash, responded in part by quickly developing less "vicious" forms of barbed wire. Smaller barbs that "pricked" without penetrating plus designs that made the whole fence more visible or "obvious" (thus more easily avoided) were introduced.
The new "obvious" barbed wire, new laws governing fence building, and the demonstrated effectiveness of the Frying Pan and XIT ranch methods of fencing helped to avoid any serious lapse in barbed wire sales. Eventually the Open Range cattlemen had to give way to closed-range ranching and the barbed wire fence.
Although other methods of fencing are available today, barbed wire fences still dot the countryside. Additionally, man has found other uses for barbed wire, some even more "vicious" than the original armored fences and long, penetrating barbs of the early barbed wires.
Don't fence me in | The first barbs | Barbed wire patents | Pitchin' fences | Barbed wire capitol/XIT Ranch | The fence-cutters' war | The big die-up | Barbed wire then and now
