Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T17:41:16.940Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

High Noon on the Western Range: A Property Rights Analysis of the Johnson County War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2007

Randy McFerrin  and
Douglas Wills
Randy McFerrin
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Economics, College of Business and Economics, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM 88003. E-mail: [email protected].
Douglas Wills
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of Finance, Milgard School of Business; University of Washington, Tacoma; Tacoma, WA 98402. E-mail: [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Wyoming's Johnson County War of 1892 is the historical basis of later popular depictions of the West as violent, and it influenced the development of Wyoming. Many see this era as the end of the open range system and the ascendancy of stock ranching and farming. Popular depiction argues that the event was an act of vigilantism of large foreign-owned firms against small individual settlers. We argue that the war was a conflict of property rights systems and use a model developed by Alston, Libecap, and Mueller to explain why violence broke out in Johnson County in 1892.

Richer (the Rancher): We made this country. Found it and we made it … Made a safe range out of this. Some us died doin' it. We made it. Then people move in who never held a rawhide through the old days. Fenced off my range. Fenced me off from water. Some of them like you paw ditches, and take out irrigation water, and so the creek runs dry sometimes, and I got to move my stock because of it. And you say we have no rights to the range. Stark (the Homesteader): You talk about rights. You think you got the right to say that nobody else has got any. Well, that ain't the way the government looks at it. Shane [Paramount Pictures, 1953]

Type
ARTICLES
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 67 , Issue 1 , March 2007 , pp. 69 - 92
Copyright
© 2007 The Economic History Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allen Douglas W. “Homesteading and Property Rights: or, How the West Was Really Won.” Journal of Law and Economics 34, n. 1 (April 1991): 1–23.Google Scholar
Alston Lee J., Gary D. Libecap, and Bernardo Mueller. “A Model of Rural Conflict: Violence and Land Reform Policy in Brazil.” Environmental and Development Economics 4 (1999): 135–60.Google Scholar
Alston Lee J., Gary D. Libecap, and Bernardo Mueller. “Land Reform Policies, the Sources of Violent Conflict, and Implications for Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon.” Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 39 (2000): 162–88.Google Scholar
Anderson Terry, and J. Bishop Grewell. “Property Rights Solutions for the Global Commons: Bottom-UP or Top-Down?” Duke Environmental Law and Policy Forum 10, no. 1 (Fall 1999): 73–101.Google Scholar
Anderson Terry, and Peter J. Hill. “The Evolution of Property Rights: A Study of the American West.” Journal of Law and Economics 18, no. 1 (April 1975): 163–79.Google Scholar
Anderson Terry, and Peter J. Hill. “The Race for Property Rights.” Journal of Law and Economics 33 (April 1991): 177–97.Google Scholar
Anderson Terry, and Peter J. Hill. The Not So Wild, Wild West: Property Rights on the Frontier. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004.
Anderson Terry, and Fred S. McChesney. “Raid or Trade? An Economic Model of Indian-White Relations.” Journal of Law and Economics 37, no. 1 (April 1994): 39–74.Google Scholar
Baber William Walker. The Longest Rope; The Truth About the Johnson County War. Caldwell, ID: Caxton Printers, 1940.
Brown Richard Maxwell. Strain of Violence: Historical Studies of American Violence and Vigilantism. New York: Oxford University Printing Press, 1975.
Bureau of Land Management. Land Patent Records Online Database.
Burroughs John Rolfe. Guardian of the Grassland: The First Hundred Years of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association. Cheyenne, WY: Pioneer Printing & Stationary Company, 1971.
Clawson Marion. Uncle Sam's Acres. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1951.
Dennen Rodgers Taylor, From Common to Private Property: The Enclosure of the Open Range. Unpublished Dissertation, University of Washington, 1975.
DeSoto Hernando. The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else. New York: Basic Books, 2000.
Eaton James Winton. “The Wyoming Stock Growers Association: An Application of Davis' and North's Theory of Institutional Change.” Unpublished dissertation. University of Missouri-Columbia, 1981.
Ellickson Robert C. Order Without Law: How Neighbors Settle Disputes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991.
Gates Paul Wallace. “The Homestead Law In An Incongruous Land System.” The American Historical Review 41, no. 4 (July 1936): 652–81.Google Scholar
Hibbard Benjamin Horace. A History of the Public Land Policies. New York, NY: Peter Smith, 1939
Hollon W. Eugene. Frontier Violence: Another Look. New York, 1974.
Jackson W. Turrentine. “The Wyoming Stock Growers' Association Political Power In Wyoming Territory, 1873–1890.” The Mississippi Valley Historical Review 33, no. 4. (March 1947): 571–94.Google Scholar
Larson Taft Alfred. History of Wyoming. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990.
Libecap Gary. Locking Up the Range Federal Land Controls and Grazing. Pacific Studies in Public Policy, Ballinger Publishing Company. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger Publishing Co., 1981
Mondy R. W. “Analysis of Frontier Social Instability.” The Southwestern Social Science Quarterly 24 (1943): 167–77.Google Scholar
Marshall Thomas M. “The Miners' Laws of Colorado.” American Historical Review 25 (1910): 426–39.Google Scholar
National Agricultural Statistics Service. http//www.nass.gov/QuickStats/
Osgood Ernest Staples. The Day of the Cattleman. Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 1929.
Powell John Wesley. Report on the Lands of the Arid Region of the United States: With a More Detailed Account of the Lands of Utah. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1962.
Sandoz Mari. The Cattlemen. New York: Hastings House, 1958.
Smith Helena Huntington. The War on Powder River. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966.
U.S. Census Bureau. Report on Agriculture by Irrigation in the Western Part of the United States at the Eleventh Census. Washington, DC: GPO, 1894.
U.S. Census Bureau. Special Census Report on the Occupations of the United States at the Eleventh Census. Washington, DC: GPO, 1896.
U.S. Census Bureau. Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1900, no. 23. Washington, DC: GPO, 1900.
Webb Walter Prescott. The Great Plains. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1981.
Wyoming Stock Growers Association. By-Laws and Reports of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, and the Laws of Wyoming for the Protection of Stock Growers as Amended by the Eighth Assembly. Cheyenne, WY: Bristol & Knabe, 1884.