Eastward I go only by force, but west I go free, ” proclaimed Henry David Thoreau in Walking, Or the Wild, which first appeared in 1862, one month after his death. With this essay, the transcendentalist and part-time surveyor helped perpetuate the myth of a West unfettered and wild, a Rousseauan utopia. “I believe that the forest which I see in the western horizon stretches uninterruptedly towards the setting sun,” he wrote. With the nature diarist’s candid eye, Thoreau perceived the shadow of technological progress encroaching upon the Frontier, predicting the parceling of the land, the day “when it will be partitioned off . . . when fences shall be multiplied . . . and walking over the surface of God’s earth shall be construed to mean trespassing . . .” He would have been shocked to find that less than three decades later, even in the glorious West of his imagination, the worst had already come true.

Eleven years after the philosopher’s death, a sheriff in Illinois — Joseph F. Glidden — witnessed a demonstration that would revolutionize animal husbandry as much as it would landscapes. At a county fair he saw a wooden rail spiked with nails that reinforced an ordinary wire fence effectively holding back cattle. Fashioning barbs on an adapted coffee grinder, Glidden improved on this prototype. He invented and patented and soon mass-produced the toothy, twisted strands that forever changed the face of the open range.

Like the Navajo and Ute, most nomadic Indian tribes, had already been confined to reservations, immobilized within ghettos they could only leave at the risk of losing government annuities or of being hunted down like rabid dogs. Bison, their succor and sustenance, had been nearly wiped out in a systematic attempt to pacify the “hostiles.”

Safe from raiding parties, ranch owners began fencing tracts of prime grassland, reducing the need for hired hands. They employed sections of barbed wire to safeguard gaps in the landscape through which cattle often escaped from its habitual ranges. These “drift fences” were rarely connected to each other and, supposedly, did not much hinder travelers or wildlife.

All this changed with the terrible winter of 1886-1887. Blizzards buried pastures under sleet and snow, following summers of drought and prairie fires. As a result of heavy livestock losses, ranchers and cattle company managers took to fencing in pastureland, where they could easily attend to cattle and grow hay for the winter.

Fenced-off lands meant that more and more, herders became dependant on public lands, which consequently deteriorated. Any present-day westerner living close to a nature preserve is familiar with the sight of boot-high grass on one side of a fence set against eroded red dirt on the other.

The artifact that many Indians called the Devil’s Rope (for its proclivity to cripple their ponies) is a manifestation of attitudes toward the wild and the tame, the product of a nature philosophy and worldview that seek control. Fences are meant to segregate. They keep out the nonconformist. The unkempt. The unwanted. The non-human. At the same time they prevent flight. Old time Bronc busters worked in corrals, and even modern-day horse whisperers seek obedience inside the round pen, a place without corners in which to hide.  

After the Cold War, the country increasingly turned against its non-human residents, all in the name of growth. Actual and symbolic dividers now crisscross the New West, leaving it fragmented, a quilt of private and public lands, national parks and wilderness areas, state parks and preserves. Power lines, dams, roads, railroads, canals, pipelines, clearcuts, state and county lines, and ranchettes have joined fences in the subjugation of space.

Aside from confining recreational use — hiking, skiing or mountain biking — the ecological costs are tremendous. As bio-geographers point out, isolated animal populations become genetically uniform and more susceptible to disease or environmental changes. Barbed wire also causes damage to animals. Horses panic upon contact and get tangled up. Bats and birds — especially low-flying raptors chasing prey — become ensnared and when they try to pull free suffer broken wings, cuts or impalement.

The disregard of wildlife finds its most horrific expression in the custom of crucifying coyotes on barbed wire. Allegedly, the sight of their dead brethren will drive “varmints” away. Occasionally one finds several canine carcasses strung out along a fence line; desiccated or crawling with maggots, skulls pierced by fence poles, eyes filmed over or turned into gaping holes — they form a macabre procession. Sometimes they bear messages.

“Got sheep?”

Or, “If Clinton were president, I would be a protected species.”

Good fences don’t make good neighbors. They keep us from meeting them.

Michael Engelhard is the author of Redrock Almanac, a collection of canyon country vignettes. He commutes between the Colorado Plateau and Alaska, where he works as a wilderness guide.