EARLY FENCING ON THE MIDDLE WESTERN PRAIRIE∗

∗Aid from the University of Nebraska Research Council in the early stages of the research is gratefully acknowledged.

ABSTRACT

Fencing has played an essential part in the transformation of wild landscapes into cultural landscapes on the American prairie. In some cases, enclosures of farms and fields are sufficiently conspicuous or distinctive to help give character to a place. Contemporary accounts of early fencing and limited quantitative data as to material and form of enclosures permit some generalizations of sequences in fencing and recognition of some distributional patterns. Fencing experience in Illinois, often with antecedents in the East and in Europe, commonly was repeated in prairie areas to the west. This study is concerned primarily with Illinois, Missouri, and Iowa before barbed wire became dominant.

Notes

∗Aid from the University of Nebraska Research Council in the early stages of the research is gratefully acknowledged.