A key weapon in the struggle to settle America's plains, barbed wire was patented in 1873. Years of armed range fights and lawsuits ensued as ranchers and farmers separated livestock and grain crops, ending open grazing and encouraging small-scale farming in the West. This fencing innovation consisted of two or more pieces of twisted wire bearing thorn-like barbs at regular intervals. Called "Devil's Rope" by Native Americans, it replaced more conventional and familiar types of fencing materials. Barbed wire provided a means of immediate enclosure, compared with slow-growing shrubs like the osage orange used to enclose land in the midwest, which tended to die during the droughts and high winds common to the plains. Likewise, the wire material was quicker, easier, and cheaper to install than was wood fencing, which often had to be imported from the east; it was more practical than rocks for stone walls...