Women On the Trail and On the Farm
Man Directing a Two-horse Plow
On the Move in a Wagon
Covered Wagons
Immigrants Flock to Iowa
Why Move to Iowa?
Come to Iowa
Immigrant Transportation
Pioneers Travel in Groups
Early Travelers Face Danger
Pioneers Leave Civilization
Fence Making on the Frontier
Prairie Fires on the Frontier
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Fence Making on the Frontier
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Time Frame: 1800's
Farmers made fences with whatever they could find for materials in the 1800s.
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Transcript
Looking back, it might seem like the pioneer farmer spent making and repairing fences then actually farming. Barbwire was not introduced until the late 1870s, and early farmers had to make fences with whatever they could take from the land. The most common was the stake and rider rail fence. In places were wood was in short supply, farmers experimented with hedge rows of Osage orange or earth fences, which were little more than walls of sod. These were almost always a failure. Fences were usually strung to keep cattle and hogs out, not in, since livestock freely roamed the prairie.
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