Barbed Wire in Cooke County

The plaque hedges, and the hedge is worth keeping: Sanborn's 1875 sale here may be the earliest of two-stranded wire in Texas. The Handbook of Texas says Henry Bradley Sanborn did sell the state's first barbed wire but failed to exploit the market. The famous proof came in 1876, when salesmen Pete McManus and John Gates fenced a herd of longhorns on Alamo Plaza in San Antonio. Gainesville made a natural first stop. After the Civil War it was a supply point for cowboys driving herds north to Kansas.

What the plaque says

Barbed Wire in Cooke County The development of barbed wire fencing had a revolutionary impact on the economy and settlement pattern in Texas. In 1874, Joseph Glidden of Illinois received a patent for his barbed wire. By 1875, Henry B. Sanborn had come to North Texas as Glidden's barbed wire salesman. Cleaves & Fletcher Hardware, once located at this site, and other Gainesville businesses began to stock Glidden's Barbed Wire as it came into demand by Texas ranchers. Sanborn's 1875 transaction with Cleaves & Fletcher may represent the earliest sale of two-stranded modern barbed wire in Texas. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Great Hanging Memorial — 0.4 mi
  Two granite monuments in a Gainesville park, dedicated in 2014, for the Cooke County men the Confederate militia hanged in October 1862 on suspicion of Unionism.
• Stonewall Saloon Museum — 22 mi
  Saint Jo's first permanent building, a stone saloon of 1873 with rooms upstairs for trail drovers, in a town named, the story goes, as a joke on a founder who did not drink.
• Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge — 24 mi
  A 1946 refuge on the Big Mineral Arm of Lake Texoma, laid over land bought for Denison Dam and the site of the vanished railroad town of Hagerman, now a winter stop for geese.

More markers nearby

• Gainesville National Bank — steps away
• Cooke County Free Library — steps away
• W. T. G. Weaver — steps away
• Gainesville-Fort Sill Road — 0.2 mi