Visitors to Fort McCoy are used to the sight of barbed wire. It sits atop the fences surrounding the cantonment area and other areas around the installation.
It is used during training exercises today and has been used by the military and private landowners for more than 150 years. The first patents for barbed wire fence appeared in 1867 and 1868, belonging to Lucian B. Smith and Michael Kelly, respectively.
Neither of these patents resembles what most likely comes to mind for those reading this; Smith’s patent shows a single-strand wire with wood or metal spools that have nails or wire spurs inserted into them, while Kelly’s patent shows a single-strand wire with curved diamond shaped sheet metal barbs. Most readers will think instead of the Glidden’s Barb, patented in 1874, which has a single-strand wire with a smaller piece of wire with two sharpened ends wrapped around the strand. By 1897, there were over 450 patents filed for variations of barbed wire.
Barbed wire was originally intended for keeping cattle in certain areas and out of other areas. This was especially important to cattle ranchers of the Old West. It was used by military forces soon after, initially by Portuguese and British forces in conflicts in Africa, by Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders in the Spanish-American War, and then extensively in World War I.
The United States installed barbed wire along the southern boundary shared with Mexico, first in 1909 in California and more extensively later when the border patrol was created in 1924. Barbed wire continued to be used across the country at farmsteads and homesteads for containing livestock.
Many of these former places now comprise the area we know today as Fort McCoy. Many of the archaeological excavations at Fort McCoy sites, which date to the Settlement era, have recovered at least a small amount of barbed wire, while some sites contained substantial amounts.
Barbed wire has played a significant role in numerous aspects of American history, including even a lawsuit that went all the way to the Supreme Court and established an important precedent for patent law. Barbed wire is still used by farmers and ranchers today and is showcased at museums dedicated specifically to the invention in Kansas, Texas, and Illinois.
The impressive number of patents associated with barbed wire is useful in archaeological investigations because the different variations can be used to determine if a site was still in use by a certain year, or that a site cannot be older than a specific year. There are many artifacts that archaeologists can encounter in their excavations which are sharp and potentially dangerous, but few provide as pointed an example of why wearing gloves in archaeological fieldwork is a good rule of thumb.
All archaeological work conducted at Fort McCoy was sponsored by the Directorate of Public Works, Environmental Division, Natural Resources Branch.
Visitors and employees are reminded they should not collect artifacts on Fort McCoy or other government lands and leave the digging to the professionals.
Any individual who excavates, removes, damages, or otherwise alters or defaces any post-contact or pre-contact site, artifact, or object of antiquity on Fort McCoy is in violation of federal law.
The discovery of any archaeological artifact should be reported to the Directorate of Public Works Environmental Division Natural Resources Branch.
Social Sharing