Picture this for a second a really simple twisted
piece of metal just a regular wire right just
wire. It's inexpensive It's totally unassuming
and yet sitting right there on a basic wooden
post it completely reshaped the physical and
the political landscape of our entire world.
Yeah, you see it driving down the highway, maybe
stretching for miles along the roadside, and
it just kind of blends right into the background.
Exactly. It's one of those invisible forces of
history. You really rarely stop to think about
the sheer impact those little twisted points
of steel have actually had on human civilization.
Which is exactly why we're bringing this to the
table for you today. Welcome to the deep dive.
We have gathered a massive amount of historical
documentation, design schematics, global impact
studies, all of it centered entirely on barbed
wire. The humble barbed wire. The humble barbed
wire. And our mission today is to take you on
a journey exploring how this really basic agricultural
tool went from a random idea tinkered with in
a farmhouse to a global symbol of both private
property and severe oppression. We're basically
doing all the heavy lifting to save you the time
of digging through all that dense historical
text yourself. Because there is a lot of it.
There's so much. So we're really glad you're
here. Let's just jump right in. To really understand
why this invention hit the world like a lightning
bolt, we really have to look at the landscape
of the American westward expansion, specifically
right before barbed wire existed. You have railroads
expanding. at just a breakneck pace. And you
have farmers pushing out into the plains who
desperately need to keep free -ranging livestock
out of their crops. And the scale of that problem,
I mean, it's really hard to wrap your head around
today. But imagine trying to protect thousands
of acres of wheat from massive herds of wandering
cattle. And your only traditional fencing materials
are wood and stone. Out in the vast, treeless,
rocky plains? Yeah. It's a total logistical nightmare.
It was an entirely unsustainable business model.
I mean, look at the very first farmers in the
Fresno, California area around 1872. They spent
nearly four thousand dollars on lumber just to
protect twenty five hundred acres. Wait, four
thousand dollars? In 1872. Yeah. In modern money,
so for the year 2025, that's equivalent to about
$108 ,000. Oh. Just to build a basic wooden perimeter.
That is just staggering. A farmer can't absorb
that kind of overhead just to keep cows away.
But surely they tried other methods before resigning
themselves to, you know, bankruptcy by lumber.
They did try. The primary alternative was planting
a biological fence. It was a plant called Osage
Orange. OK. It's this intensely thorny bush.
But the problem is, to make a functional fence
out of it, you have to transplant thousands of
these individual bushes. Then you have to wait
years for them to grow thick enough to actually
stop a thousand pound animal. Right. And you
just have to cross your fingers that the rain
-starved dusty soils out on the plains won't
just kill the plants outright. OK, let's unpack
this. Because when you have an entire agricultural
industry facing what is essentially a billion
dollar problem, it usually triggers a frantic
race for a practical solution. And that race
really hits a boiling point around 1873. Yeah,
at a county fair in DeKalb, Illinois. Of all
places. Right. That year, you have this meeting
of minds. The major players who would eventually
become known as the big four of the barbed wire
industry were all just wandering this fair. Just
attending the fair. Exactly. Joseph Glidden,
Jacob Haish, Charles Francis Washburn, and Isaac
L. Elwood. They all happened to see a display
by a man named Henry B. Rose. He had recently
patented something he called the wooden strip
with metallic points. Which, just based on the
name alone, sounds incredibly rudimentary. Oh,
it was. It was literally just a - wooden block
with wire protrusions attached to it, you were
meant to hang it on a smooth wire fence to just
prick any cow that leaned on it. But that really
simple mechanism sparked an idea in Joseph Glidden.
He went home from that fair and just started
experimenting with wire. And the way he solved
the manufacturing puzzle is frankly brilliant.
Tell him how he did it. He realized he needed
a way to hold the sharp metallic barbs perfectly
in place without them sliding up and down the
wire. To figure out the twisting mechanism, he
actually used his own home coffee mill. Wait,
you mean the little hand crank machine you used
to grind roasted coffee beans in the kitchen?
The exact same one. He used the internal grinding
mechanism of the coffee mill to figure out how
to uniformly twist two long strands of wire together,
and that locked the shark barbs tightly into
place right between the twists. That is unbelievable.
That little kitchen experiment led directly to
his 1874 patent, which he boldly named the winner.
A kitchen appliance basically birthed the modern
agricultural perimeter. Yeah. Lucian B. Smith
had actually patented a very basic version of
barbed wire earlier, in 1867, but Glidden's coffee
mill modifications are what made it durable,
mass -producible, and effective. It was the modern
invention we recognize today. I have to imagine,
though, that showing up with a spool of sharp,
dangerous -looking metal didn't immediately win
over everyone on the frontier. I mean, the farmers
might have wanted it, but ranchers were entirely
accustomed to the open range. What's fascinating
here is how the product required a masterful
psychological approach to sales. Down in Texas,
folks were highly skeptical. Oh, I bet. Open
range ranchers absolutely hated the concept of
enclosed land. Plus, they were terrified this
new wire would just tear their valuable cattle
to shreds. And there was also this deep lingering
political suspicion that northern industrialists
were just trying to exploit. the South. So how
do you convince an angry, skeptical crowd of
Texas ranchers to buy into this? You bring in
a showman. In 1876, a salesman named John Warren
Gates takes the wire down to the Military Plaza
in San Antonio, Texas. He doesn't just pass out
pamphlets, he sets up a massive public demonstration
right in the middle of the plaza. Right in the
open. He builds a corral out of the barbed wire,
drives a herd of really aggressive Texas longhorn
cattle inside, and just lets the crowd watch.
Let me guess. The cattle charge the wire, get
a prick from the barbs and back off. Precisely.
It safely and effectively contained the animals
without slaughtering them. The visual proof was
completely undeniable. The demonstration was
such a massive success that Gates actually had
to retreat to the nearby Menger Hotel just to
process the flood of orders. Wow. The industry
just exploded. Between 1873 and 1899, there were
up to 150 different companies manufacturing variations
of this wire. And as with any massive industrial
boom, the big fish eventually eat the small fish.
Always. John Warren Gates realized the power
he held parted ways with his initial partners
and created a massive monopoly called American
Steel and Wire. He utilized total vertical integration.
That means his company controlled everything
from mining the iron ore to drawing the steel
rods all the way to twisting the final barbed
wire. By total monopoly. Exactly. It became a
colossal corporate empire that was later absorbed
into U .S. steel. But the business history is
really only half the story here. To really appreciate
how this product changed the physical landscape,
we have to look closely at the engineering. Because
putting up a barbed wire fence is not just unrolling
a spool and nailing it to a tree, it is an intricate
exercise in physics. Because you're dealing with
a staggering amount of force. A properly installed
barbed wire fence is stretched under up to half
a ton of tension. Half a ton. That's a thousand
pounds of pull trying to snap that wire back.
Which means the most critical component of the
entire fence is the corner post. Its sole function
is to resist that massive tension. If a corner
post fails, the whole fence collapses. You can't
just stick a log in the mud. No. You need a primary
post. And then about eight feet away, you place
a brace post. You connect those two with a horizontal
compression brace and then run diagonal wires
between them, twisting them tight to form a solid,
immovable assembly. It's an entire structure.
Yeah, and for really long stretches of fence,
you actually need double braces built into the
line just to keep the tension stable. And the
wire itself has to be engineered to survive the
elements for decades. For standard agriculture,
you're generally looking at double -strand zinc
-coated galvanized steel. And that galvanization
process is key. It basically means giving the
steel wire a bath in molten zinc. The zinc acts
as a sacrificial armor, so the elements eat away
at the zinc coating instead of rusting the steel
underneath. But extends the life of the fence.
Dramatically. If you buy a class I coating, which
is a lighter dip, it'll start to rust in about
8 to 10 years. But if you spring for the heavy
duty class 3 coating, you get 15 to 20 years
of rust protection. Then you have to actually
attach it to that massive corner post. You wrap
it around and tie it off using a specific knot
called a timber hitch, which is fascinating because
that specific knot actually holds under tension
much better with stiff wire than it does with
flexible rope. Then you just stretch it tight.
The line posts you see every 10 or 15 feet in
between the corners. They aren't there to take
up slack or pull the wire. Their only job is
simply to keep the evenly spaced strands suspended
off the ground. Here's where it gets really interesting,
though, because this brilliant feat of engineering
designed to save farmers money brought about
massive, sweeping, unintended consequences. Yeah.
The most immediate being the dramatic sudden
end of the American cowboy era. Herding thousands
of cattle across the open plains required an
army of men. You needed cowboys to track the
herds, catch strays, drive them to market. But
once barbed wire provided this incredibly cheap
permanent method to enclose landing control movement,
that vast manpower was obsolete. It just wasn't
needed. Right. Historians frequently point to
the widespread adoption of barbed wire as the
literal endpoint of the Old West. But closing
the open range wasn't just an economic shift
for ranch hens. It triggered an absolute catastrophe
in the 1880s known as the Big Die Up. It is a
truly grim chapter of history. cattle rely heavily
on instinctual migration patterns for survival.
When brutal blizzard conditions hit the northern
plains, the herds naturally turn their backs
to the wind and migrate toward the warmer southern
plains. That's just what they do. Exactly. But
by the early 1880s, ranchers in the Texas Panhandle
had aggressively fenced off their claims. They
knew the sparse winter grass on their land couldn't
support extra grazing from northern cattle. So
they built miles of barbed wire to physically
block the migration. You really have to imagine
the sheer horror of that scenario. Massive herds
of cattle. freezing and exhausted, blindly walking
south through blinding snowstorms, only to suddenly
hit an endless immovable wall of sharp wire.
Yeah. During the particularly brutal winter of
1885, up to three quarters of some of these herds
either froze to death or starved right there
piled up against the fence lines. And the fallout
from that mass death was explosive. Smaller cattlemen,
particularly down in central Texas, were desperate.
Their herds were dying. They had no access to
water or grazing land. So they took matters into
their own hands and started cutting. the fences,
which erupted into what became known as the fence
cutting wars. It was complete chaos on the frontier.
You had midnight raids with wire cutters, vigilante
justice, and outright range wars between the
farmers defending their perimeters and the open
range ranchers trying to keep their livelihoods
alive. People were actually dying in shootouts
over this wire. It escalated to the point where
the state government had to step in. In 1884,
Texas passed a law making fence cutting a felony
offense, which effectively ended the violence
and legally settled the American frontier in
favor of private property. But the story doesn't
stop at the frontier. No. If we connect this
to the bigger picture. You start to see a very
dark, chilling evolution. A tool that was explicitly
designed, refined, and perfected to control the
movement of animals was very rapidly adapted
to control the movement of human beings. It didn't
take long for global militaries to recognize
the potential of an impassable razor -sharp barrier.
The first recorded combat use of barbed wire
was actually by Portuguese troops defending against
African tribes during the combat of Maghul in
1895. And by 1899, it was being deployed extensively
in the Boer War. But it wasn't just being used
to protect military outposts from charges. It
was used strategically to control vast spaces
of land and, significantly, to hold the captured
Boer population inside concentration camps. As
the timeline pushes into the 20th century, we
see this wire increasingly defining international
borders and urban unrest. Looking at the U .S.-Mexico
border, the government built its first international
fence along the California line. from 1909 to
1911. But that was initially just to keep cattle
from wandering between the countries. Right,
cattle. But by 1924, the newly established Border
Patrol began building more barbed wire fences,
this time specifically to prevent people from
crossing. Decades later, during the 1968 Chicago
riots, authorities actually attacked barbed wire
frames to the front of police and National Guard
vehicles to drive directly into crowds of protesters.
They earned the nickname Daily Dozers after the
city's mayor. But the most devastating, world
-altering application of barbed wire in human
warfare was undoubtedly World War I. The trench
warfare of the Western Front. The endless entanglements
placed in front of the trenches completely paralyzed
troop movement. It trapped men in no man's land,
slowing their advance to a crawl and making them
incredibly vulnerable to the relentless machine
guns and artillery. The environment was a muddy,
chaotic hellscape, and the wire technology had
to adapt to it. Think about the logistics. You
can't exactly stand up in the middle of no man's
land under the light of a flare with a heavy
hammer pounding wooden posts into the ground
to build a fence. You'd be shot instantly. Instantly.
So military engineers invented the screw picket.
It was a heavy metal rod with eyelets for stringing
the wire, but the bottom was shaped like a corkscrew.
That's really clever. It allowed soldiers to
sneak out into the mud under the cover of darkness
and silently twist the pickets directly into
the ground without making a sound. The psychological
terror of encountering that wire in the dark
is hard to overstate. There is a visceral account
from a British writer describing the specific
horror of the German defossus. He noted that
while the British wire was galvanized, giving
it that zinc armor we talked about earlier, which
faded to a dull, low visibility gray, the German
wider was not galvanized. So it rusted. It rusted
to this menacing, highly visible black color.
And the construction was brutal. He described
the German wire is being thick as a sailor's
heavy rigging rope with 16 barbs packed into
every single foot. 16 bars per foot. You can't
even grab that. It's essentially a continuous
rusted blade of metal. And this grim legacy of
human containment carried right into World War
II. During the internment of Japanese Americans,
the United States utilized barbed wire perimeters
to enclose massive camps like Manzanar. Across
the Atlantic, the Nazis integrated barbed wire
directly into the sinister architecture of their
concentration camps. and extermination camps
such as Auschwitz. The perimeter fences weren't
just physical barriers there. No, they were heavily
electrified to prevent any chance of escape.
In the specific extermination areas of these
camps, guards would sometimes meticulously braid
the barbed wire with tree branches to camouflage
the fences and hide the atrocities from outsiders.
Through these systematic horrific applications,
barbed wire permanently transitioned from a simple
agricultural convenience into a universal symbol
of oppression and the outright denial of human
freedom. It's deeply ingrained now. It's the
reason Amnesty International prominently features
a barbed wire wrapped around a candle in logo
and why the oppressive East German border regime
was commonly referred to simply as wall and barbed
wire. It is a really heavy history to process.
It truly is. The human cost associated with this
invention is immense. So what does this all mean?
When we step back from that heavy historical
context, how do we interact with this invention
now in the modern era, knowing all of this? From
a pure safety and navigation perspective, humans
have largely figured out how to bypass it. If
you're careful, you can stretch the gaps, wear
thick protective clothing, or if you're dealing
with the modern high -security variant like razor
wire, you can throw a thick carpet over it or
use heavy -duty wire cutters. But wildlife doesn't
have the luxury of wider cutters or thick carpets.
Today, the sheer volume of injuries caused by
barbed wire is primarily seen in the animal kingdom,
and the reactions vary drastically by species.
How so? Well, grazing animals like cows and sheep
are generally slow -moving. When they press against
a wire and feel the sharp pain of the barb, their
instinct is to back away. But horses are entirely
different. Because they're flight animals. Exactly.
When a horse gets spooked or entangled and feels
that sharp prick, it doesn't back up. It panics
and tries to violently pull away or run through
it. When a thousand -pound horse thrashes against
tightly stretched barbed wire, the barbs act
like hooks. Uh -oh. They tear off massive patches
of skin. which often leads to severe career -ending
disabilities or fatal infections. It's also a
silent, invisible killer for nocturnal animals.
Birds, owls, bats, they simply cannot perceive
those thin metallic strands while they're flying
at speed in the dark. The impact on local ecosystems
is actually such a significant issue that it
prompted major international legislation. Yeah,
in Norway. Right. In 2010, the country of Norway
took a definitive stand and completely banned
the use of any new barbed wire fences aimed at
limiting animal migration. They now require farmers
to utilize electric fences instead, which provide
a warning shock without the physical laceration.
Which leads to an incredibly surprising, highly
lucrative modern consequence that reaches far
beyond the borders of Norwegian farms. Because
those northern cattle are no longer grazing in
fields surrounded by sharp barbs, their hides
are virtually pristine. Right. They don't have
the deep scratches, scuffs, and healed stars
that you find on cattle raised in the American
West. And this is something I had absolutely
no idea about. How does a pristine cow hide from
Norway impact the global market? It dictates
the supply chain for ultra luxury automobiles.
Automakers, specifically top tier brands like
Bentley and Rolls Royce, demand absolute perfection
for the interiors of their vehicles. They source
their leather specifically from Norwegian and
Northern European cattle, precisely because the
absence of barbed wire in those regions guarantees
a flawless hide. That is the most mind blowing
butterfly effect. A local environmental policy
change designed to protect flying bats and panicked
horses ends up defying the meticulous supply
chain for a half million dollar luxury car. It
really highlights how deeply intertwined this
simple invention is with modern commerce. And
I can't let us wrap up without bringing up one
quick highly unexpected cultural note. Beyond
farming, Beyond borders and beyond luxury cars,
barbed wire also found a bizarre home in the
theatrical world of hardcore professional wrestling.
Oh, right. Legendary wrestlers like Mick Foley
famously utilized baseball bats heavily wrapped
in barbed wire during their matches. It just
perfectly encapsulates how deeply embedded that
specific imagery of extreme danger and toughness
is in our collective culture. It's an instantly
recognizable shorthand for danger. Whether you're
looking at the plains of the American West, the
muddy trenches of Europe, the supply chains of
luxury cars, or the center of a wrestling ring.
It's been quite a journey today. We have traced
how a simple link of twisted wire, an idea that
quite literally took physical shape inside a
farmer's kitchen coffee mill, managed to completely
transform global agriculture. It corralled the
livestock. It ended the romanticized era of the
American cowboy. And it drew the hard, unforgiving
lines of private property across the frontier.
And simultaneously, it defined modern military
history. It became a devastating tool for unimaginable
oppression, paralyzing armies in the mud of no
man's land, while continuing to serve as a physical,
psychological barrier that has shaped international
borders and security for over a century. But
before we let you go, there's one final detail
from our deep dive that really stuck out. We
want to leave you with this thought to chew on.
Earlier, we talked about all the ways barbed
wire has been used to divide us, to keep cattle
in, to keep enemies out, to build walls between
nations. But around the turn of the 20th century,
in some rural areas, farmers actually use the
metal strands of their barbed wire fences as
local telephone networks. That's wild. Imagine
that. The very same sharp, dangerous tool designed
to isolate people and divide the land was simultaneously
acting as the physical wiring that connected
isolated voices together in conversation. It
makes you wonder what other tools in our world
designed for division might have a hidden potential
for connection. That is a fascinating question
to mull over. Thank you so much for joining us
at the table for this deep dive. We hope it gave
you a completely new perspective on something
you probably drive past every single day without
a second thought. Keep questioning the world
around you and we warmly invite you back for
our next exploration. See you then.