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Thursday, July 17, 2008

Dangerous — and Collectible

By Rory McClannahan
Mountain View Telegraph
      Telegraph wires made it possible to talk across the country and trains linked transportation.
    But it was barbed wire that changed the Old West.
    More than 130 years after its invention, barbed wire has become mundane, except to those who collect it. And some of those folks are coming to Moriarty to display, buy and sell their collections.
    The 36th New Mexico Barbed Wire and Collectibles Show will be held Friday and Saturday at the Moriarty Civic Center. In addition to barbed wire, other collectibles will be on display, said Nancy Sowle of Stanley, an organizer with the New Mexico Barbed Wire Collectors Association.
    "It's great event," Sowle said. "We get people from all over the country that attend."
    It's also a pretty close-knit group. The number of barbed wire collectors is limited, so it is easy to bump into people who share an interest in the hobby at shows all over the country.
    "It's kind of like a family reunion when we go to these shows," Sowle said.
    But any stranger who wanders into a show will be warmly welcomed, she said.
    The Moriarty event is free to the public.
    Generally, the association holds its annual shows in different towns in New Mexico from year to year, but this is the second year in a row Moriarty has hosted the event. Next year, the show will be held in Raton, Sowle said.
    Although she doesn't collect barbed wire, Sowle's husband, Dan, does. Collected barbed wire is mounted in an 18-inch length on a decorative board. The length shows off the spacing of the barbs.
    Sowle said that some people may find it odd to collect barbed wire, but it really is interesting. According to the Devil's Rope Museum in Texas, there are 570 patented wires with more than 2,000 variations. But only about 10 percent of the barbed wire patents are on strands that proved to be effective, meaning there has been a whole bunch of wire that may have been used in the past that has been lost to time.
    "What makes it so valuable was that there was so little made and so little left around," Sowle said.
    Barbed wire was invented in 1874 by Joseph F. Glidden. Within a decade of its introduction, the fencing material changed the West, eliminating free-range grazing. Up until then, keeping livestock penned required walls or board fences, which could be expensive to build and maintain. Barbed wire made it cheap to keep cattle from wandering off.
   

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