Barbed wire is what tamed the Wild West. The gov't fences the general public out of all sorts of places (try strolling in on the NSA in MD)
Dang, I can’t find it now, but was reading on one of these open-range stories, that a landowner in NM fenced his property to keep out the free-range cattle; in one place on his land, the fence had to go down a steep ravine; the ravine filled with water a couple f times a year, and the fence kept getting washed out.
So much for property rights, and maintaining them.