The Devil’s Rope
Pull into the Texas Panhandle town of McLean along old Route 66, walk past the two balls of rusty barbed wires, each 3 feet in diameter, and enter the Devil’s Rope Museum: You just might learn a whole lot about how the American West was settled. Inside the cinder-block building, which once housed a brassiere factory, exhibits and vintage tools shed light on an oft-overlooked contribution to Texas history.
Invented in the 1870s, barbed wire was designed to prick and discourage. With the two-stranded metal wire lined by dagger-like barbs, ranchers controlled cattle herds and breeding, and farmers protected their fields against roaming stock. In the process, barbed-wire fences displaced the Longhorn breed, which was suited to open range; interrupted cattle drives across the Panhandle Plains; and obstructed the raiding trails of Plains tribes such as the Comanche. In other words, this is the
