Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
spurred the business of bringing Texas cattle to market. By 1873, the railroad had reached
Fort Worth, and cattle could also be transported the newfangled way.
Though immortalized in many old Western movies, the cattle-drive days barely lasted
two decades. By the early 1880s, with the invention of barbed wire, fences stretched
across much of Texas. Disputes naturally arose. In 1883 Texas banned the cutting of
fences, legislating a new way of life throughout the state. (In Austin it's still illegal to
carry and conceal wire cutters in your pocket.) The Texas Rangers, once mere border
guards, were reinstated as a state police force to enforce the new law. This was, effect-
ively, the end of what most of us think of as the cowboy era.
The first barbed fence, then known as 'thorny wire' was patented by Michael Kelley in 1868. The Devil's
Rope Museum in McLean today recognizes 2000 types of barbed wire.
