DUANE
Duane's take
The way the marker tells it — and I'm stickin' close to that telling — here's the story of the Drift Fence. Now picture the Texas Panhandle before the mid-1880s. Not a single range fence on the horizon.
Just open grass running north as far as the eye and the wind could carry you. And that wind, friend, carried more than just cold air. When the winter blizzards rolled in — and in the Panhandle they rolled in hard — cattle didn't stay put.
They drifted. Down from Oklahoma, down from Colorado, down from Kansas, all of them pushed south by the storm, right onto the Texas ranches sitting in the Canadian River breaks. We're talking the Box T, run by Dominion Cattle Company Limited.
The Seven K, belonging to York, Parker and Draper. The Bar C's, out of Creswell Land and Cattle Company. The Turkey Track, under Hansford Land and Cattle Company.
The LX, Bates and Beal's outfit. The LIT, Littlefield's brand. And the LE, belonging to Lee and Reynolds.
Seven outfits, and every spring they had the same problem staring them in the face: by roundup time, there were as many northern cattle mixed into those herds as local ones. Every blizzard brought a whole new herd nobody asked for, and the land was paying the price. Overgrazed.
Worn thin. And before anyone could move a single steer to market, somebody had to sort the whole mess out — a costly, time-consuming job that nobody was getting paid enough to love. So the Texas ranchers did what practical men do when a problem keeps showing up at the door.
They agreed to build it out. Each one would fence along his north boundary line. And when you strung all those lines together, what you got was something remarkable: two hundred miles of fence.
It ran from the northeast corner of the Panhandle, southwest to near the site where Dumas was later founded, then bent west about thirty-five miles into New Mexico. Four strands of wire. Four barbs per strand.
Posts set every thirty feet. A gate swinging open every three miles, so at least somebody could get through when they needed to. The materials alone amounted to about sixty-five carloads of wire and posts — every bit of it hauled in from Dodge City.
Sixty-five carloads. Think about that the next time you're staring down a roll of barbed wire. It was a fence built to hold back the Great Plains itself, or at least the cattle on it.
But here's where the story turns. In 1890, most of that two-hundred-mile monument to rancher cooperation came down. Because an 1889 state law prohibited any fence from crossing or enclosing public property — and the Drift Fence, as grand as it was, didn't survive the reckoning.
Most of it was removed to bring the ranches into compliance. Two hundred miles of fence, hauled in from Dodge City, strung across the Panhandle to hold back the drift of a continent — and then, just like that, taken back down. Some things in Texas are built to last.
And some things last just long enough to tell a story worth remembering.
What the marker says
Until the mid-1880's, no range fences existed in the Texas Panhandle. Thus when winter blizzards came, cattle drifted from Oklahoma, Colorado, and Kansas onto the Texas ranches of T ("Box T"--Dominion Cattle Co. Ltd.), 7K ("Seven K"--York, Parker & Draper), CC ("Bar C's"--Creswell Land & Cattle Co.), ^ ("Turkey Track"--Hansford Land & Cattle Co.), LX (Bates & Beal), LIT (Littlefield), and LE (Lee & Reynolds). The influx caused these ranches in the Canadian River breaks to be overgrazed, for by spring roundup there were as many northern as local cattle in the herds. To prevent the costly and time-consuming job of separating the cattle, each Texas rancher agreed to construct a fence along his north boundary line. The resulting fence was 200 miles long and ran from the northeast corner of the Panhandle southwest to near the site where Dumas was later founded, then west about 35 miles into New Mexico. It was a 4-strand, 4-barb fence with posts 30 feet apart and a gate every 3 miles. The materials amounted to about 65 carloads of wire and posts hauled from Dodge City. In 1890, however, to comply with an 1889 state law prohibiting any fence from crossing or enclosing public property, most of the fence was removed. (1969)