Sheep wars occurred in many western states, though they were most common in Texas, Arizona, and the border region of Wyoming and Colorado.

Later, sheep wars occurred in the central and West Texas counties of Schleicher, Nolan, Brown, Crane, Tom Green, San Saba and Coleman.

In April 1883, another law was passed that called for sheepherders to present a certificate showing that their herd had been inspected for scabies before crossing any county borders.

In some cases, sheepherders were forced to cut fences and cross into private property in order to reach public land but, eventually, "a type of code was evolved that required the herder to drive his flocks at least five miles a day on level terrain or at least three miles a day in rougher country [when crossing private land]."

By 1886 it was illegal for sheepherders to move their herds within two miles of cattle grazing land and the Mogollon Rim was an unofficial border, or deadline, which no sheep were permitted south of.

Pleasant Valley was located beyond the border so when the Daggs Brothers and the Tewksburys began moving in sheep, the local cattle ranchers, such as the Grahams, resisted violently by attacking the sheepherders.

The United States Army later dispatched Indian scouts to follow the murderer's trail and, according to author Leland J. Hanchett, the tracks led to Tom's cabin.

Members of the Graham faction and some Hashknife cowboys were out searching for Mart Blevins, dead or alive, and they assumed the Tewksburys knew something about his disappearance.

The group included five men and was led by Hampton Blevins, the son of Mart and the half-brother of Andy Cooper, who killed the Basque sheepherder.

A clear defeat for the Graham faction, the war turned into a long series of revenge killings and had little to do with sheep after the first encounters.

In 1884, near the San Francisco Mountain, angry cattlemen rounded up over 100 wild horses, strapped cowbells to their necks, rawhide to their tails, and then drove them into a series of sheep herds numbering more than 25,000, yelling and firing guns in the process.

To enforce the resolutions, the newspaper said, the "stock feeders and cowboys [cattlemen], with a force of eight hundred to a thousand are holding themselves in readiness forcibly to resist any advance made south of Hahn’s Peak (near Pearl Lake),by the sheep owners.... A war is imminent and unless the more conservative heads prevail, the rifle will figure a conspicuous part in a Routt County sheep war.

When a posse from Parachute, Colorado rode out to the scene, they found the wounded Brown and a "mass of dead sheep at the foot of a 1,000-foot bluff."

The Craig Courier paper reported the following on September 14, 1894; "The owners [of the sheep] are residents of Parachute with rights to the adjacent range and the posse made a futile race to apprehend the raiders.

Upon learning of the raid, Edwards headed towards the scene but he was intercepted by a "party of masked men," who ordered him to remove the rest of his flock back across the state border.

After the raid, on January 23, 1897, Edwards told an Omaha, Nebraska newspaper reporter the following; "I have an armed force of about fifty [men] ready for the clash when it comes.

Another incident took place on the morning of November 15, 1899, when forty masked men attacked a sheep camp located on the lower Snake River.

[2][3][5][6][15][16][17] According to Robert Elman, author of the book, Badmen of the West, the sheep wars ended because of the decline of open rangeland and changes in ranching practices, which removed the causes for hostilities.

The Taylor Grazing Act of 1934, passed four decades later by the United States Congress in Washington, D.C., at the beginning of the presidential administration of 32nd President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945, served 1933-1945), which also eased some of the economic and social tension.