Date: July 15, 2008
Contact: Merrith Baughman, 402-223-3514

"Cheaper than dirt and stronger than steel," was the slogan shouted in 1874 by promoters of a new style of fencing. This new style of fencing was barbed wire and its invention had a profound impact on the United States. A special exhibition of 181 different styles of barb wire is on display now in the Education Center at Homestead National Monument of America through August 31.

This free exhibition compliments the collection on permanent display inside and outside the new Homestead Heritage Center . A brochure explaining the positive and negative impacts of barb wire and illustrating some of the types on permanent display at the monument is also available. "I think visitors will be surprised at the variety of the collection. I also think they will find it interesting to learn how much barb wire changed agriculture," said Superintendent Mark Engler.

The collection is from the Kansas Barb Wire Museum in La Crosse, Kansas , a museum devoted to this pioneer invention. With no trees for fences and no stones to build walls, homesteaders on the Great Plains needed more practical ways to contain their livestock and fence their property. Some, like Daniel Freeman – whose homestead is now Homestead National Monument of America, planted Osage orange hedgerows while others allowed their cattle and sheep to freely graze on the open prairie. But with the development of barb wire all this changed. Over the decades that followed, much of the open prairie was divided up into parcels marked by barbed wire fencing.