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Barbed wire, patented by Joseph Glidden in 1874, has been a fixture of the Texas scene since. Barbed wire fenced in the open range, part of the Texas legend, transforming Texas’s stock-raising industries. Yet transformation rarely goes smoothly.
Barbs, Bullets, and Blood: The 1880s Texas Barbed Wire Wars, by Harold D Jobes, shows how rough such a transformation can go. It tells the story of how barbed wire came to Texas, and the fence-cutting wars erupting in the wake of its arrival.
In the book’s opening chapters, Jobes offers a high-level overview. He discusses the history of barbed wire and presents its precursors in Texas. This includes a chapter on John Grinninger’s 1839 spiked-wire fence in Austin. He also discusses the fence problem. Before barbed wire, only stone, wood picket and rail, briar or bois d’arc were available to build fences.
Wood and stone fences were expensive. Living fences, hedges, briars, or tightly planted bois d’arc take too long a time to grow. Only small plots could be fenced. Most of Texas remained open range. Barbed wire was cheap and could be installed quickly. Suddenly large swaths of Texas became fenced.
Jobes presents problems caused by both sides. Large corporations run by absentee owners created massive ranches. These corporate ranches and ranchers from Texas both blocked roads, sometimes fencing lands they neither owned nor leased. This denied access to legitimate owners. Even responsible fence-building ranchers raised the ire of free-range ranchers. Free-rangers would cut fences (occasionally even long-established fences) to keep the range open. The law was inadequate for these problems.
The result was wire-cutting “wars” over much of prairie Texas. The turmoil crashed cattle prices and slowed investment in Texas, hurting the state's economy. Legal reforms passed in the 1880s, especially in the 1884 special session, corrected the worst abuses. It reined in the fence wars.
Jobes then dives in at the local level, examining individual fence wars in particular counties. He takes readers into each war, showing the wide-ranging nature of the conflicts. While there are common themes, each possesses its own set of occasionally eccentric characters and sometimes odd outcomes.
Barbs, Bullets, and Blood is for those interested in Texas history or the history of the 19th-century Old West. The research is comprehensive, and the book’s reach is broad. Jobes’s story is enhanced by fifty photographs, both period and modern, illustrating the people, places, and items associated with the barbed wire wars.
“Barbs, Bullets, and Blood: The 1880s Texas Barbed Wire Wars,” by Harold D Jobes, University of North Texas Press, 2025, 448 pages, $34.95 (Hardcover), $27.96 (E-book)
This review was written by Mark Lardas, who writes at Ricochet as Seawriter. Mark Lardas, an engineer, freelance writer, historian, and model-maker, lives in League City, TX. His website is marklardas.com.
Discussion (4)
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Only after we moved to north-central Texas seven years ago did I appreciate the importance and difficulty of fencing on the large west Texas (and I later learned, Oklahoma) ranches. I had lived in suburban southern California most of my life, followed by 18 years in western New York state, which agriculturally is mostly orchards and dairy farms that involved sectioning off smaller grazing fields. Although our immediate area has only small-scale ranches (up to a few hundred acres, though those still have a lot of fencing), we drive across west Texas and eastern New Mexico, where there are many very large scale ranches.
Living in a town that was once home to some of the more famous cattle drivers who drove cattle from Texas ranches to railheads in Kansas and markets in Colorado, I even better understood the premise of the musical Oklahoma! I also now understand the need, and large amount of work required, for ranchers to survey the miles and miles of fencing surrounding their properties.
And the variety of barbed wire. Although I have yet to visit the Devils Rope Barbed Wire Museum, many of the museums we have visited around west Texas have displays on barbed wire, discussing its importance to beef cattle ranching.
en.wikipedia.org
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texashighways.com
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Not directly related to fencing wars, but many of the ranches around us (somewhat smaller, a few dozen to one to two hundred acres) use pipe fencing. We kept seeing advertisements for people willing to paint pipe fencing. Only after looking at it for a while (especially the ranch nearest our house, which uses pipe fencing) did I start to appreciate how much work must have gone into installing that pipe fencing, and painting the fencing over time. So I began to appreciate why barbed wire, with its low cost of manufacture and relative ease of installation, became so popular after it was introduced.
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Growing up I built a lot of barbed wire (and woven wire) fences. Wire and posts can become a big expense, depending on how large an area one wants to enclose.
When I arrived at my last USAF assignment there was a long fence line along the road that had, instead of barbed wire, a couple hundred rusty metal bed springs attached end to end.
It was a creative way for some farmer to save money, but it offended everyone who saw it. I enjoyed bringing it up in casual conversation to watch people get steamed. By the time I realized that photographs were warranted, it was gone. I think of it every time I drive by.
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My Dad had a small but varied collection. Alas, it is long gone.