Few inventions changed Wyoming as thoroughly as a strand of twisted steel with a barb every few inches. Before barbed wire, the range was open, cattle mingled across vast unfenced country, and ownership was settled by brands and roundups. The wire ended all that.

Cheap, quick to string, and painful enough to turn a cow, barbed wire let ranchers claim and hold specific ground. It made rotational grazing possible and put an end to the great open-range era, sometimes violently, as fence-cutting disputes flared between neighbors and between ranchers and homesteaders.

More than a century later, the wire still rules ranch life, mostly as an endless chore. Winter drifts flatten it, elk and antelope crash through it, and posts rot or heave with the frost. A rancher can spend whole weeks each year walking fence lines, stretching wire, and tamping new posts into stubborn ground.

There is a growing movement to make fences friendlier to wildlife, with smooth bottom wires and lowered top strands so pronghorn can crawl under and deer can clear the top. The West it built is being gently retooled — but the wire itself is not going anywhere.