Late in 1876, so the story goes, a young man named John Warne Gates built a wire-fence pen in the middle of San Antonio, Texas. He rounded up some of the toughest and wildest longhorns in all of ...

In 1876, John Warne Gates described the new product he hoped to sell as 'lighter than air, stronger than whiskey, cheaper than dust'. Barbed wire wreaked huge changes in America. Show more In 1876 ...