AUTUMN 2019 EQUUS 498 83
WROUGHT BY
BARBED WIRE
In 1848, Dan Waggoner, son of a
Tennessee farmer who was also a
horse and slave trader, brought 242
head of longhorn cattle and some
horses to a claim along the south
bank of the Red River. Blessed by
abundant surface water, in the early
days the ranch was the frequent target
of raids by Kiowa and Comanche
tribesmen. As Waggoner’s son W. T.
(“Tom”) Waggoner grew up, father and
son built a cattle-breeding empire.
In 1869 Tom drove 5,000 head of
longhorns to Abilene for a huge
profit of $55,000. They used the cash
to expand their holdings until by
1902, when Dan Waggoner died, Tom
Waggoner inherited more than one
million acres of land to form the largest
ranch bounded by one fence in the
United States.
What kind of fence? Archaeologists
surveying the old Pérez holdings have
found that both corrals and gates were
made of wooden boards. Tall trees
suitable for making into planks do not
grow in western Texas, so Sr. Pérez like
all other landholders in the region had
to bring in lumber from elsewhere.
Steamboats brought logs from the Gulf
States west along the Texas coast where
they were unloaded at ports such as
Corpus Christi or else taken up the Rio
Grande as far north as Laredo. There
the logs were milled into lumber and
the planks were loaded onto wagons to
be taken inland.
Because lumber was scarce, fencing
large acreage was unthinkable. Pérez
maintained a single fenced field
which he irrigated with water from theMedina River. That field grew maize,
beans and onions to feed his family
and the vaqueros who worked for
him. As was traditional in Spanish-
Mexican ranching, he grew no hay
although occasionally cut some in
years of exceptionally high (more
than 12 inches) rainfall. His livestock,
both cattle and horses, were kept upon
open range. The open-range concept
makes sense in arid lands because the
normal growth of grass will support
no more than a few head per acre, if
that; so that to maintain large herds
in healthy condition, very large acreage
is necessary.
This changed dramatically in
1874, when Joseph Glidden of Illinois
invented barbed wire. Legend has it
that while traveling through southern
Kansas in the 1850s, Glidden
encountered a type of shrubby tree