Drift Fence

The disaster built for years. When ranchers were ordered off Cheyenne and Arapaho lease lands in Indian Territory in 1885, more than 200,000 cattle crowded onto Panhandle and Kansas range already overgrazed, and wildfires burned much of the remaining grass that November. Then the January 1886 blizzard drove herds south against the wire. The Handbook of Texas puts the dead at as many as 200,000. Afterward ranchers bought or leased land, cut herd sizes, fenced pastures and raised feed, and most drift fences were gone by 1890.

What the plaque says

Famed cattleman Charles Goodnight established one of the first ranches in the Texas Panhandle, the J A Ranch, in 1876. Later that year, Thomas S. Bugbee established the first cattle ranch in Hutchinson County. As a result of soaring beef prices cattle ranching proliferated in this region of the U.S. in the 1880s. The Texas Panhandle, with its open range and expansive grasslands, became the preferred winter grazing site for cattle migrating south from Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Kansas. This seasonal influx of cattle disrupted the practice of area ranchers who went to great lengths to respect adjacent ranch boundaries. Members of the Panhandle Stock Association pooled their resources and in 1882-85 erected barbed wire barriers along a 200-mile stretch of the Panhandle including Hutchinson County to prevent cattle from drifting south into the fertile Canadian River Valley. The "drift fence" worked too well in the winters of 1886 and 1887 when thousands of cattle moving south ahead of strong storms stalled at the fence line and froze or were trampled to death. The staggering losses prompted federal and state legislation which limited fencing on public lands and the "drift fence" was removed or incorporated into private ranch fencing. Sesquicentennial of Texas Statehood 1845-1995.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Hutchinson County Museum — 26 mi
  Borger's museum on the three-mile Main Street of a 1926 oil boom town that drew 45,000 people in ninety days and was put under martial law in 1929.

More markers nearby

• Lindberghs Land at Spearman — 11 mi
• Spearman — 12 mi
• Hansford County Sheriff Robert E. (Bob) Martin — 12 mi
• Hansford County — 12 mi