Site of Historic Drift Fence

Site of Historic Drift Fence. . Until the mid-1880's, no range fences existed in the Texas Panhandle. Thus when winter blizzards came, cattle drifted from Oklahoma, Colorado and Kansas to the Texas ranches of T ("Box T"--Dominion Cattle Co. Ltd.), 7K ("Seven K"--York, Parker and Draper), CC ("Bar C's"--Creswell Land and Cattle Co.), ("Turkey Track"--Hansford Land and Cattle Co.), LX (Bates and Beal), LIT (Littlefield), and LE (Lee and Reynolds). The influx caused these ranches in the Canadian River breaks to be overgrazed, for by spring roundup there were as many northern as local cattle in the herds., To prevent the costly and time-consuming job of separating the cattle, each Texas rancher agreed to construct a fence along his north boundary line. The resulting fence was 200 miles long and ran from the northeast corner of the Panhandle southwest to near the site where Dumas was later founded, then west about 35 miles into New Mexico. It was a 4-strand, 4-barb fence with posts 30 feet apart and a gate every 3 miles. The materials amounted to about 65 carloads of wire and posts hauled from Dodge City., In 1890, however, to comply with an 1889 state law prohibiting any fence from crossing or enclosing public property, most of the fence was removed.