Barbed Wire Demonstration

The younger partner in the demonstration was twenty-one. John Warne Gates was born in Winfield, Illinois, in 1855, took a five-month business course at Naperville and had little success in hardware before Washburn-Moen sent him to Texas. When the company refused him a partnership after his San Antonio triumph, he quit and built the Southern Wire Company in St. Louis into the largest maker of unlicensed wire. His nickname came from a 1900 horse race in England, where he won $600,000 on a $70,000 bet. He died in France in 1911.

What the plaque says

Barbed Wire Demonstration Once called "bobwire" by cowboys, barbed wire was a French invention first patented in the U.S. in 1867, but it did not gain favor with cattlemen until the late 1870s. Joseph Glidden of Dekalb, Illinois, Received a patent for his barbed wire in 1874, and it was wire of his manufacture that was the first barbed wire fencing successfully demonstrated in Texas. In 1876, veteran salesman Pete McManus and his young partner, John Warne Gates, made their first demonstration of "the Glidden winner" barbed wire. Though speculation has placed this demonstration in San Antonio's bustling Military Plaza, it was here in the quiet "mudhole" of Alamo Plaza that McManus and Gates set up a barbed wire corral and then drove cattle into the pen. It is said that after the corral held the thundering animals under the astonished eyes of cowboys and cattlemen, the flamboyant Gates invited spectators into the Menger Hotel to place their orders. After the theatrical demonstration in Alamo Plaza, the market for barbed wire fencing suddenly exploded with large sales to Texas ranchers and others along the frontier. Pete McManus reportedly sold more barbed wire fencing than any salesman in the world. John W. "Bet-A-Million" Gates became the world's largest barbed wire manufacturer. He helped found the Texas Company (later Texaco) and developed the town of Port Arthur. Barbed wire fencing changed the landscape of the American west and with it the industries of ranching and agriculture. It made possible the introduction of cultivated cattle stock into the beef industry and opened up the fertile land to farmers and other homesteaders. Within 25 years nearly all the open range had become privately owned and was under fence. (2000)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Alamo — steps away
  Mission San Antonio de Valero before it was a fort: a church its builders never finished, a thirteen-day siege in 1836, and the Army gable of 1850-52 that became its emblem.
• La Villita Historic Arts Village — 0.2 mi
  The little village across the river from the presidio, where Cos surrendered San Antonio in 1835, rebuilt by Depression-era youth crews as a working crafts village.
• San Antonio River Walk — 0.2 mi
  A Depression-era park one level below downtown, built because San Antonio refused to pave its river after the 1921 flood, and designed by an architect the project later fired.
• San Fernando Cathedral — 0.5 mi
  The Canary Islanders' parish church on Main Plaza, where Bowie married and Santa Anna raised a red flag, rebuilt in Gothic Revival around the walls of the 1750s church.

More markers nearby

• San Antonio Section, National Council of Jewish Women — steps away
• Menger Hotel — steps away
• Pan American Round Table — steps away
• John Hermann Kampmann — steps away