Closing the Open Range

Barbed wire doesn’t seem like such an important invention today, but it once played an integral part in the development of the American West.  Joseph Glidden’s 1873 invention closed down the open ranges and placed cattle on well-defined lots of private plains and wide-open country was cordoned off with spikey wire, which effectively ended the era of the cowboy.  Glidden, through barbed wire, became one of the richest men of his time.  However, he died from an infection from an unhealed cut, much the way his invention had injured many handling it and the animals caught in its web.  Upon his death, his body was shipped in a special ice-cooled train coach.  His final wish was that he be buried far from the dusty plains where his Texas headquarters were located to lie eternally like a gentleman in a gravesite in New York.