WHEN THE WEST WAS WIRED

Historians often credit Winchesters and other firearms with having “won the West” in the 19th century. Certainly, gun-toting pioneers and settlers played a role. Other significant factors that moved the American frontier ever westward include victory in war (over Mexicans and Indians), the discovery of gold and silver (in California and many other places), government incentives (e.g., the Homestead Acts), technological advances (railroads, transcontinental telegraph service) and improvements in farming. Not to be overlooked in the settlement of the West was an invention that transformed the lives and livelihoods of cowboys, farmers, ranchers and American Indians alike—barbed wire.

Homesteaders out West had