The Devils Rope Museum and its plain-spoken founder, Delbert Trew, tell those stories and a whole lot more.
Joseph Glidden of DeKalb, Illinois, introduced barbed wire to the world in 1874 with a design that could be mass-produced in a factory.
When barbed wire was introduced, it was very vicious and it caused lots of injuries to cattle, horses, and people.
City people, he says, have little appreciation for how barbed wire civilized the Great Plains and the western United States.
Somebody said, Hey, if barbed wire can do this for cattle, think of what else it could do.Ingenuity, technology, industry, and geography are all part of the barbed wire story, it turns out.