At the height of Manifest Destiny, when the United States was pushing into the West, the frontiersmen of the late 1800s needed a cheap way to contain livestock and keep grazing animals out of farm ...

Few inventions that were designed in the 1870s that have not changed since they were patented, and they are still widely used in the 21st century. Barbed wire is an innovation that fits this category, ...

Glidden was an American farmer originally from Charlestown, New Hampshire. After growing up in Clarendon, New York, and finishing school, he returned to his father’s farm to work, according to ...

In 1904, the El Paso Herald called for “a barb wire fence along our side of the Rio Grande” to keep out “undesirable aliens.” The newspaper wasn’t referring to Mexicans, but to Chinese immigrants, ...