Jim Hoy
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Jim Hoy is professor of English and director of the Center for Great Plains Studies at Emporia State University.
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Hoy notes that European land usually used stone or hedge fences; foot traffic crossed on stiles, which were usually a sort of stairs through the fence. In Cornwall, however, a particular kind of stile – the flat stile – developed that seems a forerunner of the cattle guard; this consisted of long, flat stones over a pit, with a gap between each stone. The flat stile had a particular application – the lich gate at cemeteries. Dungeons and Dragons players will think of a “lich” as an undead magic user, but the word originally simply meant “corpse”. The “lich gate” was the entrance to a cemetery for pallbearers carrying a coffin on their shoulders; since a gate would have given trouble, a flat stile acted as an entrance through the stone wall. The animals to be kept out were free-range pigs; you can use your imagination as to why pigs might want to get into a cemetery.
The next application for cattle guards comes from railroads. Early European railroads generally had actual people patrolling the right-of-way; in the wide open spaces of American this wasn’t practical. Hoy found an American patent for a cattle guard dating to 1837. Railroad cattle guards were sometimes similar to later automotive types, with a pit and horizontal, spaced bars; but there were many variants, often incorporating spikes or triangular metal teeth intended to prevent cattle from climbing up the embankment in the first place.
Hoy notes automotive cattle guards didn’t originally use the railroad examples, and credits a difference in philosophy; the railroad cattle guard was considered to part of a fence while the automotive cattle guard was seen as a sort of gate. Originally the open range on the Great Plains didn’t need any gates, because there weren’t any fences, but eventually farmers and towns got annoyed with cattle wandering through. There were considerable difficulties; the stone and split rail fences of the East just wouldn’t work, since there weren’t any stones or trees (plus an eastern style split rail fence probably wouldn’t do more than amuse a longhorn). The fence problem was solved by the invention of barbed wire, although there was considerable controversy between farmers and ranchers over whether fences were supposed to keep cattle in or out (i.e., was it the farmer’s or the rancher’s responsibility to build fences). In most cases the farmers won; they had more votes and were able to persuade State and local governments to enact fencing ordinances. Barbed wire fences then created the need for gates; originally that meant just loosening a couple of strands of wire so you and your horse could get over. Then cowboys began putting loops in the wire at trail crossings, to make it easier to unhook and stretch taught again. Finally, still in the horse and buggy age, various means of making fence crossing more convenient began to show up, usually actual gates.
Gates were OK in the horse drawn era; you had to get out of your buggy or off you horse to open one, but a well-trained horse or team would usually walk through the gate on its own and stop on the other side while you closed the gate again. This proved problematical when the automotive era started, especially since a lot of early cars didn’t have reliable parking brakes. Various expedients included bridges; bumper gates that were pushed open and sprung closed; and mechanical contrivances with ropes, pulleys and counterweights that could be worked without getting out of the car. In an example of technological synergy, Hoy argues that a strong impetus for cattle guard invention was the oil industry; oil leases on ranches had to be visited frequently for tanker pickups and routine maintenance and it cost time and money to open and close lots of gates. Hoy can’t identify the first automotive cattle guard, but believes it was installed around 1912. The standard style quickly developed; a pit in the road bridged by parallel horizontal bars and “wings” to attach the fence. He notes that lots of these were locally fabricated; in particular, petroleum companies often had lots of surplus pipe or sucker rod that could make the bars.
There were, of course, lots of attempts to improve things but the simplicity of the design almost always won out. It didn’t always work; although most cattle, horses, and sheep were nervous about insecure footing, Hoy notes cattle guards don’t stop goats very well; and one farmer found his horses had learned to lie down in front of a cattle guard, roll across, and stand up on the other side. State highway departments tried using painted cattle guards on major roads, which work fairly well. Hoy notes the State of Utah changes the color of the stripes every time they need repainting on the theory that cattle won’t get used to them; apparently nobody in the Utah highway department realizes cows are color blind.
Not terribly well organized, but it doesn’t really matter as it’s a fast read. Illustrations and plans of various cattle guards. An example of a seemingly mundane topic made interesting. I wonder what archaeologists of the distant future, when everybody is a vegetarian because all nonhuman animals are extinct, will make of the excavated remains of cattle guards? “Ritual object”, I bet.… (lisätietoja)