Altered Environments: The Outer Banks of North Carolina

Four: Understanding the “Sea of Troubles” Facing Coastal Communities

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Four Understanding the “Sea of Troubles” Facing Coastal Communities What is common to the greatest number gets the least amount of care. Aristotle Economic growth and development have changed the Outer Banks rapidly in recent decades. Unfortunately sometimes the development damages the island environment. In order to understand why we spoil coastal areas that we value so much, we must understand how incentives affect decision makers . For example, although few livestock can be found anywhere on the Outer Banks and only a limited number of horses are allowed to roam freely in limited areas, Outer Bankers allowed livestock to roam without restriction well into the twentieth century and long after other parts of the country had fenced them in. Understanding the events that led to fenced-in livestock in most of the United States by the end of the nineteenth century will provide a model that can help explain decisions that shape the Outer Banks today. The place to begin the story is out west, where two centuries ago the cowboys who herded cattle on the open plains provided the inspiration for many tall tales. Incentives Matter In America in the first half of the nineteenth century, ranchers allowed livestock (principally sheep, cattle, and horses) to roam freely over the great plains of the Southwest, where the law of the open range ruled. With land so plentiful, ranchers had no need to fence in the livestock that were allowed to wander the plains. If a cowboy found a valley already occupied by someone’s herd, he simply moseyed the herd onto the next open range. Besides, the cost of fencing was prohibitive in the West, unlike in the East, where rocks and trees were more plentiful. We can imagine that “seldom was heard a discouraging word” on the wide expanse of tall-grass prairies that supported millions of bison for generations of Native Americans. By the 1860s and 1870s, however, times were changing. Following the Civil War beef prices shot up, and in response ranchers expanded their : 40 : Altered Environments herds. As pasturelands became scarcer and thus more valuable, ranchers began to see the advantage of restricting access to the land. With growing demand for grazing land, ranchers began to realize that even the great expanse of the Wild West had limits. In addition fencing in one’s cattle would help protect one’s investment; a fenced-in cow would be less likely to wander off or be stolen by rustlers. Cowmen began forming stock growers ’ associations that passed laws to limit entry onto formerly commonowned land. However, ranchers still faced the prohibitive expense of fencing wide expanses of land. As is often the case, the potential to make a profit is the father of invention. Although good-quality smooth wire was readily available before 1870, it was not a dependable deterrent to livestock passage. What ranchers needed was wire that would stop cattle from roaming and discourage trespassers and rustlers. Out of Illinois came the solution—barbed wire. Joseph Glidden of Dekalb, Illinois, is credited with inventing barbed wire in 1873, although the battle among inventors was a little like an Old West gunfight. Jacob Haish, who submitted barbed-wire patents at about the same time as Glidden, claimed to be the first. When the dust had cleared, the U.S. Cattle and other livestock were allowed to roam the Outer Banks without restriction long after other areas of the United States required ranchers to fence in livestock. In this 1930s photograph, cattle graze on Portsmouth Island. Photograph by Aycock Brown; courtesy of the Outer Banks History Center, Manteo, North Carolina The “Sea of Troubles” Facing Coastal Communities : 41 : Supreme Court declared Glidden the owner of the first barbed-wire patent. Ingenious competitors thought of numerous variations on the theme and created an additional 529 barbed-wire patents that satiated western ranchers ’ desires. Although barbed wire provided the means to enclose the plains in a cost-effective way, many independent-minded westerners, armed with sixshooters and wire cutters, bitterly fought the enclosure movement. The often violent “fence cutter wars” led to many deaths and heavy financial costs before the resistance was broken by large landowners who began fencing their boundaries. The owners of the Frying Pan ranch, Henry Sanborn and Joseph Glidden (two of the Illinois barbed-wire inventors), strung 150 miles of barbed-wire fencing at a price of more than thirty-nine thousand...