Site of Historic Drift Fence

The Handbook of Texas describes how the fences were kept. Camps were set at intervals along the line, men were hired to keep the wire in repair, and a $500 reward was posted for the arrest of anyone who damaged it. The wire came by wagon from railheads in Kansas, Colorado and New Mexico or from Harrold, then the end of the Fort Worth and Denver City line, and most posts were cedar cut in the Canadian River breaks, with some from Palo Duro Canyon. Building cost about $250 a mile, and sections were still reported standing in 1926.

What the plaque says

Until the mid-1880's, no range fences existed in the Texas Panhandle. Thus when winter blizzards came, cattle drifted from Oklahoma, Colorado, and Kansas onto the Texas ranches of T ("Box T"--Dominion Cattle Co. Ltd.), 7K ("Seven K"--York, Parker & Draper), CC ("Bar C's"--Creswell Land & Cattle Co.), ^ ("Turkey Track"--Hansford Land & Cattle Co.), LX (Bates & Beal), LIT (Littlefield), and LE (Lee & Reynolds). The influx caused these ranches in the Canadian River breaks to be overgrazed, for by spring roundup there were as many northern as local cattle in the herds. To prevent the costly and time-consuming job of separating the cattle, each Texas rancher agreed to construct a fence along his north boundary line. The resulting fence was 200 miles long and ran from the northeast corner of the Panhandle southwest to near the site where Dumas was later founded, then west about 35 miles into New Mexico. It was a 4-strand, 4-barb fence with posts 30 feet apart and a gate every 3 miles. The materials amounted to about 65 carloads of wire and posts hauled from Dodge City. In 1890, however, to comply with an 1889 state law prohibiting any fence from crossing or enclosing public property, most of the fence was removed. (1969)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Window on the Plains Museum — steps away
  Moore County's free museum on the Dumas highway, telling an industrial Panhandle of zinc smelters, helium and gas plants alongside the farm and ranch rooms.
• Alibates Flint Quarries National Monument — 24 mi
  Hand-dug pits on a mesa above the Canadian River where people quarried banded flint for thousands of years and traded it across the Plains, seen on a ranger-led climb.
• Lake Meredith National Recreation Area — 26 mi
  A Canadian River reservoir in 200-foot breaks, built to water the Panhandle's cities, that fell to a record 26 feet deep in 2013 and still rises and falls with the drought.
• Old Tascosa and the Julian Bivins Museum — 27 mi
  The 1884 stone courthouse of the Canadian River cowtown, later a ranch headquarters and the first home of Cal Farley's Boys Ranch, now a museum on the working campus.

More markers nearby

• Geological Riches of Moore County — steps away
• City of Dumas — 1.1 mi
• Moore County Courthouse — 1.1 mi
• Moore County — 5.6 mi