Barbed wire

 

Used to be iconic--maybe it still is. Used to be that wherever you look there you'd see it--barbed wire. It got brought to the Plains states in the mid-to-late 19th century, and caused at least one war (Johnson County War) when the cattleman, accustomed to unfettered drives, suddenly ran into the new resident homesteaders. Whoops. Trouble.

In most cases, the homesteaders won the day, much, I suppose, as they had won the day against the Lakota from the Missouri River--and before that from the Big Sioux--west. Good fences make good neighbors wasn't a song sung only by Robert Frost. Thusly, up went fences. And barbed wire, most all of it, today, in lousy shape.