When was barbed wire first used? It’s a question I get at least twice a week, usually from farmers fencing off livestock, small business owners securing storage yards, or even history nerds curious about the stuff that changed the American West more than any railroad or telegraph line I’ve ever sold. As someone who’s run a small barbed wire supply business for 12 years—loading rolls onto pickup trucks at 6 a.m. on weekday mornings, answering calls at 9 p.m. from ranchers who just had a break in their fencing overnight—I’ve spent way more time than I should digging into that history, and let me tell you, the answer isn’t as simple as “1870s, boom.” It’s messy, a little silly, and way more human than any textbook makes it sound. Barbed Wire
Let’s start with the part most people don’t learn in high school history: barbed wire wasn’t some sudden “eureka!” invention. People had been poking barbs into fences for decades before the first commercially viable roll ever hit a market shelf. Go back to the early 1800s, and you’ll find folks on both sides of the Atlantic sticking nails into wooden fence posts or wrapping twine with sharp metal bits around their fields to keep cows and goats from wandering. The problem back then was that this stuff was flimsy. A rainstorm would rust the nails, a cow would snap the twine, and you’d be out there redoing your fence before the sun came up. It wasn’t useful for big areas—like the vast, open plains of the American West, where ranchers were fighting over land that used to belong to Indigenous nations, and where wooden posts were so scarce they had to haul them 50 miles by wagon. That’s where the real story picks up.
The first patent for something that looked even remotely like modern barbed wire wasn’t filed by a rancher or a big-time inventor—it was filed by a guy named Lucien B. Smith, a carpenter from Kent, Ohio, in 1867. I’ve seen a copy of Smith’s old patent papers at the local historical society, and it’s wild: it’s just a strip of iron wire twisted around another strip, with little ½-inch sharp bits sticking out every 2 inches. He called it “ornamental fencing” at the time, not something for cattle. Like, he marketed it as a way to make pretty fences for gardens and flower beds. Can you imagine? Guy spends months perfecting this sharp wire, and the best use he can come up with is keeping deer out of his roses. Smith never made a dime off it, either—he probably sold a few rolls to neighborhood ladies and that was it. That’s the secret with so many early inventions, right? The person who does the heavy lifting doesn’t see the real use for it until someone else comes along.
That someone else turned out to be a dude named Michael Kelly, a farmer from Illinois. Kelly was annoyed to no end in the early 1870s by his neighbor’s cows wandering into his cornfield. Back then, Illinois was just starting to get packed with homesteaders, and the open range everyone used to share was turning into small, private farms. Kelly tried every trick Smith and others had come up with—nails stuck in posts, twisted wire, even thorny hedge bushes—but nothing stopped those cows. So in 1868, he sat down in his workshop after a long day of plowing, and twisted two pieces of iron wire together, then snaked little pieces of sharp, broken metal between them, twisting the whole thing tight so the barbs wouldn’t fall off. He tested it by tying a strand to a fence post and letting his own bull run at it. The bull hit it, yelped, ran off, and never came near Kelly’s corn again. Kelly showed his creation at a county fair in DeKalb, Illinois, in 1873, and that’s when things blew up. Farmers from all over the Midwest started lining up to buy his wire, and suddenly everyone was asking: when was barbed wire first used for real? The answer, for practical purposes, was that fair in DeKalb, 1873.
But here’s where the history gets even more interesting—because I sell this stuff every day, I know how quickly a good product turns into a gold rush. By 1874, there were dozens of guys making barbed wire, all tweaking Kelly’s design to make it sturdier, cheaper, or sharper. One of the biggest names was Joseph Glidden, a farmer and tanner from DeKalb, too. Glidden didn’t invent anything new, but he perfected it. Instead of cutting loose metal bits, he twisted the barbs right into the main wire, so they couldn’t pull out if a cow rubbed against them. I still sell Glidden-style wire today—it’s the most popular because it’s got that extra twist that makes the barbs stay put even in the worst Nebraska wind. Glidden patented his design in 1874, and by 1880, his company was selling 50,000 miles of barbed wire a year. That’s enough to wrap around the Earth twice, for anyone keeping count.
Now, let’s talk about why barbed wire mattered so much—because it wasn’t just a fence. When I talk to old ranchers who’ve been in the business for 60 years, they’ll tell you barbed wire “closed the West.” Before barbed wire, the Great Plains were open range—hundreds of thousands of acres shared by cattle ranchers, homesteaders, and even Indigenous tribes. Ranchers would drive their cattle up from Texas every spring, graze them on public land, and drive them back down in the fall. But as more homesteaders moved in, they wanted to keep their land, their crops, their cattle for themselves. Barbed wire was the tool that let them do that. It was cheap—way cheaper than building a wooden fence, which would have cost $10 per linear foot back then, compared to 10 cents for barbed wire. A single wagon could carry 10 miles of barbed wire, compared to 100 wooden posts that would take two men a week to haul. By 1885, there was enough barbed wire on the Plains to fence off every acre of private land. That’s when the big cattle drives ended, that’s when Indigenous nations lost more land to homesteaders, and that’s when the West stopped being the wide-open place everyone romanticizes. I don’t get into the politics of it too much at my supply shop, but I always make sure to mention that in my mind, barbed wire isn’t just metal and sharp bits—it’s got a whole lot of history wrapped up in it.
Wait, but hold on—some people will tell you that barbed wire was used way earlier, like in ancient times. Let’s get that out of the way, because I’ve had a few history professors come into my shop asking about that. There are accounts of Roman soldiers using sharpened stakes wired together to fortify their camps, and there’s evidence of similar wire being used in medieval Europe to line castle moats. But that’s not barbed wire as we know it. That’s just sharp metal stuck to something, not a continuous, flexible roll that you can stretch for miles. The kind of barbed wire we sell today—twisted steel, consistent barbs, cheap enough for the average farmer—didn’t exist before the 1870s. Those old examples were just makeshift defenses, not the game-changer that Lucien Smith, Michael Kelly, or Joseph Glidden accidentally created.
Over the last 12 years in this business, I’ve sold barbed wire to everyone. I sold 200 rolls to a sheep rancher in Wyoming last month who needed to keep coyotes out of his herd. I sold 50 rolls to a storage facility in Texas that needed to secure their outdoor shipping containers. Last year, I sold a small amount to a historical reenactment group that was building a replica of a 1870s homestead fence for a museum. Every time I hand over a roll, I tell the same story: this stuff started as a guy’s idea to keep his cows out of corn, and now it’s everywhere. It’s on every farm, every military base, every construction site, even some backyard fences people put up to keep their neighbor’s dog from chasing their cat.
If you’re reading this and you’re wondering about barbed wire for your own project—whether you’re a rancher fixing a fence that got knocked down in a storm, a contractor securing a worksite, or a homeowner tired of wildlife getting into your garden—let’s talk. I’ve got the kinds of wire that’s been tested for toughness, the kinds that won’t rust through after one winter, and I can help you figure out how much you need, where to get it shipped, even how to install it if you’re not sure. I don’t do big corporate contracts, I work directly with people, same as I have for 12 years.
When people ask me again, “When was barbed wire first used?” I don’t just say 1873. I tell them about Lucien Smith’s rose garden, Michael Kelly’s stubborn bull, Joseph Glidden’s perfect twist, and how a small Illinois fair turned a forgotten invention into the tool that changed a whole country. That’s the real history of barbed wire—not some textbook date, but a bunch of guys messing around in their workshops, solving a small problem, and making something that’s still essential 150 years later.
Invisible Manhole Cover References:
- McCallum, H. N., & Strattan, C. P. (1965). Barbed Wire: The Fence That Made the West. University of Oklahoma Press.
- Kent Historical Society. (1978). Patents and Inventions of the Western Reserve. Local History Series, No. 12.
- White, Richard. (1991). “It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own”: A History of the American West. University of Oklahoma Press.
- DeKalb County Fair Archives. (1873). Annual Exhibition Record, Agricultural Section.
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