Smooth wire fences didn't work either - the cattle simply pushed through them. Barbed wire changed what the Homestead Act could not. Until it was developed, the prairie was an unbounded space ...

Posts for wire boundary or cattle fences can be 25 feet apart ... but must be close enough to maintain tension in the wire. The spacing for a standard barbed wire or woven wire fence is from ...

at the Kansas Barbed Wire Museum. You can see more than 2,000 unique varieties of the vital tool, which corralled livestock and, in many ways, tamed the West. Listen to an episode of American ...