The Fence Cutting Wars occurred near the end of the 19th century in the American Old West, and were a series of disputes between farmers and cattlemen with larger land holdings.
As newcomers came to the American West to farm, established cattlemen began to fence off their larger tracts of land with barbed wire in order to protect them from the farmers' claims.
The settlers viewed this as a closing of the open range, and began to cut fences to attempt to reclaim lands in the public domain.
Some homesteaders retaliated by cutting the barbed wire of the fenced areas to give their livestock access to these lands, prompting the fence-cutting wars.
According to historian Walter Prescott Webb, "Fence-cutter wars broke out in Texas, Wyoming, New Mexico – wherever men began to fence.
[9] Yet, by 1885, barbed wire had basically overrun the eastern parts of the Wyoming Territory, which meant that legal efforts to stop the fencing of the West were a losing battle.
In 1883, a drought early in the year caused non-land owning cattlemen to become desperate, since fenced properties made it difficult to find the water and grass necessary to support their herds.
[17] In January 1884, Governor John Ireland called for a special assembly of the state legislature, which passed a bill mandating prison sentences for those caught fence cutting.
However, vigilantes surrounded the courthouse and the jail to show their support for the indicted men, and the jury soon delivered a verdict of not guilty for one man, whereupon the charges for the other 20 were then dismissed.
Farmers who filed land-use petitions grew increasingly desperate when local authorities did not respond quickly or effectively to their claims, and then resorted to more violent tactics.
But in the end, these techniques were not effective in stopping the fencing of public lands, such as when organized violence died down and was replaced by political gridlock in New Mexico.
After the Fence Cutting Wars, Western settlement continued to grow denser and barbed wire crossed more and more of the formerly open range.
They settled the conflict by agreeing to remove fences from across public roads and land not owned or leased by the former, and to allow the fence-cutters passage through the gates, in return for an end to the wire-cutting.
However, the effects it caused in Western economy was so problematic that it prompted Governor John Ireland to conduct a special session of the legislature to meet on January 8, 1884.