Why all the Fence?

Many building and yards were fenced or had hedges as you will see in early pictures.  This county as  was under "Open Range Law" as it was in most of this state and western states, and some farther west still have the law in force. What that meant  is that cattle, horses and livestock  were not  fenced. Marshal County was still under this law in my younger days.  You fenced livestock out of your property and that meant your  crops, home yard  or a garden.

You were responsible for keeping live stock off your property and out of your house and buildings.  Cattle could be driven down main street, and often were. Abilene, Kansas passed an ordinance prohibiting these drives.   However, two years later they wanted the Texas herds and cowboys to come back but they did not come back.  Fencing was a necessity around anything you did not want trampled. Most farm yards had a gate at the road in the so as to keep cattle out when a herd was moved down the road.  When people moved the cattle, they would get the neighbors involved to help, and this made them responsible also if they got on their property. Another advantage to having a gate at the road  was one could turn the cattle out in the evening and let them mow the yard and of course, fertilize it also.

Our area  in Nemaha County also had  problems with open-range laws as  did most areas.  People abused the law and this caused many problems.

 We see cattle going down the road on  trucks and no fences on either side of the road today, but it was not always like this.  There was no way to move cattle in the early days except on hoof or by rail. Animals walked from Kansas to California and from Texas to the railroad  heads in Kansas. The trail traffic could not start till the grass  was tall enough to feed the animals and they walked eating their way to their destination at the rate of about 15 miles a day. The animals had to have rest  and time to graze in the evening to keep up their strength.

Because of the "Open Range Law" is the reason  there were so many fences or hedges around every farm or homes in this country in the early days.   Hedges were  a way to grow your very own  fence.  The government would pay so much per  rod to plant hedges. This law was changed in this county early in the 1900s. As I recall Marshall County still had the "Open Range Law when I was young, however many still seemed to think they had the right to drive cattle down the road after the  law was changed. This  caused many problems if you  were not very careful and had enough help to manage the heard. and it was better to to load them on a truck or you would pay damages if they damaged the crops, the lawn, or the garden.   

Our area  in Nemaha County also had  problems with open-range laws as  did most areas.  People abused the law and this caused many problems.

 We see cattle going down the road on  trucks and no fences on either side of the road today, but it was not always like this.  There was no way to move cattle in the early days except on hoof or by rail. Animals walked from Kansas to California and from Texas to the railroad  heads in Kansas. The trail traffic could not start till the grass  was tall enough to feed the animals and they walked eating their way to their destination at the rate of about 15 miles a day. The animals had to have rest  and time to graze in the evening to keep up their strength.

Open Range Law was the law in Nemaha County.  That is why there were so many fences or hedges around every farm or homes in this country in the early days.  In my early years, the 30s and 40s  many cattle were driven down the road as there were not as many trucks and most of the  fences were in place along the roads.  In those day most farms had a saddle horses or if not could use the draft horses.

 There was an article on the web about a problems the  people in Arizona were having with the open-range law at present time where it still is the law of the State. 
 

  (Link to story on the  web if still live)
 

This is part of the story that was on the web when this page was prepared. As it often happens, the page may not be on the web in the future  If the link above works, disregard the  text  in blue below as it is the same.

 

"Thirteen Western states have some form of open-range law, most similar to Arizona's. California has the most limited, with open range only in six counties.

East of Colorado, the rest of the country long ago did away with giving cows free roam, but open range has remained prominent in the West as a relic of the past, when cattle easily outnumbered people and it made sense to let them wander. Parts of the West do have so-called "no-fence districts," where landowners petition local governments to require ranchers to fence in their cattle in certain areas.

Across the West, yellow signs warn of open-range territory along roads and highways, and mean the driver, not the rancher, is liable for hitting a cow with a vehicle. Near Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming adds a definition for tourists, warning that they should expect cows wandering on the highway. "Some of these laws are so backward," said Greg Schneider, a member of RangeNet, a group trying to change cattle grazing laws. "People didn't care about it in the past because it wasn't impacting them," he said. "But that's changing, because of the population changing, people becoming more mobile and living farther out and inhabiting areas that weren't a concern to people before."

Home on the range has gotten a lot more crowded as the West undergoes a huge population boom. From 1990 to 2000, the area had the largest growth in the country - 19.7 percent, to 63.2 million people. As the population increases and new residents move into rural areas, open-range laws have gotten more attention - and more controversy. Ranchers, fiercely protective of their cowboy way of life, resist any suggestion that they should cave in to the changing of the times. \"If it ain't broke, don't fix it," said Steve Pilcher, executive vice president for the Montana Stockgrower's Association. "It ain't broke."

In Montana, where cattle still outnumber people, a case involving a woman injured when her car struck a cow prompted the state Supreme Court to rule in December 2000 that ranchers were not exempt from liability if their livestock roamed onto roads.
 
Ranchers cringed, fearing their beloved open-range was changing. But within a few months the Legislature passed a new law declaring that a livestock owner is not responsible for damages in such cases, barring gross negligence. "Open-range has been that concept, whether you agree with it or not, that has been the code of the West for 50, 75 years. It's always been accepted," Pilcher said. He and other ranchers argue that changing the laws to require ranchers to fence in their property would cost too much and likely put them out of business.

 

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file/seneca-ks/book2  bk-sp1,2,3 & 4    last edited 04/04/2006(se)