Barbed wire changed the Western US as much as the railroad and the six-shooter. Before barbed wire arrived, the West was free and open; after, the West became concentrated in the hands of a few big ranchers. No wonder it was called “devil’s rope.”
This episode takes listeners back to 1876 to explore barbed wire and its surprisingly massive impact on the American West. Josh and Chuck dive into how inventor Joseph Glidden's simple but revolutionary twisted-wire design became a tool that literally reshaped the frontier, ending centuries of Native American nomadic traditions and transforming open prairie into enclosed private property almost overnight. Along the way, you'll learn about the violent "fence cutting wars" that erupted, how barbed wire democratized land ownership, and why this humble invention became just as transformative to settling the West as the locomotive or telegraph.
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