Barbed Wire
date: label: date made
content: 1874
name: label: maker
content: Glidden, Joseph F.
notes: label: Description
content: In the days of open range, cattle grazed freely over unfenced fields. Fencing especially disturbed western cattlemen who depended upon the open range, including private holdings, for grazing. Farmers fenced animals out of their crops, but as farm size increased and agriculture spread across the west, farmers needed a cheap substitute for scarce wood and stone. In 1874 Illinois farmers Joseph Farwell Glidden, Jacob Haish, and Isaac Ellwood almost simultaneously developed methods of attaching barbs to wire, a type of fencing that effectively kept cattle out of cropland. Despite patent fights and fierce competition, the barbed wire industry was launched and over time reconfigured rural geography. Both film and fiction depicted the often violent disagreement over fencing.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
setName: label: See more items in
content: Work and Industry: Agriculture
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content: Work
label: See more items in
content: Agriculture
label: See more items in
content: Artifact Walls exhibit
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Dr. Frank Horsfall
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: AG.66A1.046
label: catalog number
content: 66A1.046
label: accession number
content: 264475
objectType: label: Object Name
content: barbed wire