An important factor in range wars was that

The Range Wars were conflicts that arose in the 1800s and early 1900s in the American West, where the settlers fought among themselves for the land without boundaries, called "open range", where they took their cattle to graze. These wars were common until the sanction of the Taylor Grazing Act in 1934.

In these conflicts the use of the barbed wire was of vital importance, which served for many settlers to delimit their territories.