For a very brief period of time, cattle grazed freely on the open range in South Dakota on prairies where buffalo once roamed. The introduction of barbed wire contributed to the end of that short era, which is deeply entrenched in the state's history.

"Fencing the West: Buffalo to Barbed Wire" explores the history of those early days and its importance to current South Dakota. The exhibit opens today and runs through March 22 in the Adelstein Gallery at The Journey Museum. A reception from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. today kicks off the six-month exhibit, which covers many chapters in history, including the time when only Native Americans populated the state. The roundup of 1902 was also an important part of the story.

Peggy Ables, executive director of High Plains Western Heritage Center in Spearfish, said the open range cattle industry started after the Civil War, when Texas cattlemen brought their cattle north to the railheads in Kansas and then farther up into the high plains area to establish ranches here.

"And, of course, the killing of buffalo was happening at that same time, so the tradeoff was cattle vs. buffalo," Ables said.

Around 1874, barbed wire that was developed and produced in Illinois started changing the landscape of Texas and eventually the territories of the Midwest.

Author Cathie Draine said barbed wire destroyed the open prairie. "In my opinion, it's important to remember every time something is destroyed, something is created. So the fencing of the Great Plains in all likelihood put the final piece of barbed wire on the coffin of the open range, at a time when more than likely the development of the prairie, the development of the meat business and all the rest would have died any way. But the fencing really did it. It did it in a very obvious. palpable way."

Draine said that for those men, women and animals for whom living a life with no boundaries was the best that it could be, this was a traumatic time.

Deborah Gangloff, exhibit curator and museum curator of Days of '76 Museum, said preparing for the exhibit began with a story on the closing of the open range and the inspiration for Draine's book, "Cowboy Life: The Letters of George Philip." Early research for the exhibit proved to be expansive.

"This exhibition is a huge topic," Gangloff said. "There is no way we could exhaust this topic in one exhibition in one space. There is so much information and so many people we had to leave out."

Work on the project began a year ago as a team effort by a host of writers, researchers and historians. Several exhibition partners also contributed to the effort. The finished exhibit relies heavily on historical photographs and includes artifacts, audio recordings, music and artwork, she said.

Gangloff said she researched photographs from collections from across the state, the Smithsonian, the National Archives and the Library of Congress. "The photos are just extraordinary."

Members of the committee researched different components of the story and gave their finished reports to writer Paul Higbee, who condensed the information to display on text panels. The researchers' work will be available for those people who are interested in reading the deeper research and the longer story, Gangloff said.

"We will have a couple of audio portions to the exhibit, so people can actually hear '02 cowboys speaking and singing the kind of music that was popular during the open range era," she said.

The history is so rich and important that there is a lot of research yet to be done, she said. As the project took off, it did not take long to see that this was a Native American story as well as a cowboy story.

Donovin Sprague, director of education at Crazy Horse Memorial, contributed narration, photographs and artifacts on the Lakota and the buffalo.

"It didn't just start with the cattle first," he said. "Lakota people were here and the buffalo were here." He said the reservations were being created at the same time the buffalo were being depleted.

"So now people were dependent on beef as a major food supply for the natives, rather than buffalo." He said the big roundup of 1902 was designed to essentially separate the Native American cattle from the new settlers' cattle.

Gangloff said it was never really OK to run cattle on government land. "There was always some sort of fee that was supposed to be paid, but nobody every collected it," she said. Threats to start collecting the fee were the motivation for the roundup.

"The cattleman wanted to make sure their cattle weren't caught on land where they weren't supposed to be. I think everyone knew the era was coming to an end," she said.

In early 1902, approximately 400 cowboys and 4,000 horses collected more than 50,000 head of cattle from as far as the Missouri River to the confluence of the White River, she said.

Sprague said the Dawes Act of 1887 was also a big development in western South Dakota.

"It was a major, major thing, because before cattle, buffalo just roamed wherever. You had these wide open spaces. Once the fencing took place, it delineated these boundaries, and in Native American culture, fences didn't exist. You didn't own land. It belonged to the creator," he said.

Sprague said the concept of land ownership was quite different for Lakota vs. non-Lakota. "They had to adjust and figure out and learn."

Lyndell Petersen said before the barbed wire and before the Homestead Act, the cattle were grazed seasonally. They would maybe start to the north and if the winters were tough, they'd drift to the south, he said.

"That led to the big roundups in the spring," he said. "With barbed wire, that interrupted all those free movements with the seasons."

Petersen said the end of the open range would have occurred even without the use of barbed wire.

"The actions of the government to get people on the land, and the development of the railroads across the U.S. contributed also," he said.

The railroad needed people along the way to support the rails and to use them for transportation. "Many of the towns that exist on rail lines now were set up as shipping points."

Practically all of the cattle moved to the markets by train to Chicago; Sioux City, Iowa; and Omaha, Neb.

"It was standard activity in the fall for trainloads of cattle to go there. Now those cities have all pretty much faded out of the picture as market centers," Petersen said.

Sprague said LeBeau, S.D., was a major shipping point that is now a ghost town. "There's nothing there. It was one of the major export places for cattle going out to Chicago. It was a huge business."

Petersen said the evolution of the range industry also has been affected by the acquisition of grazing land by the federal government including the National Grasslands and the Bureau of Land Management.

Land that was homesteaded by people who could not make a living on it was purchased by the government. People who stayed received grazing allotments on that land.

"It probably represents the closest thing to the open range that we have now," he said.

If you go

What: "Fencing the West: Buffalo to Barbed Wire" is an exhibition that explores the story of cattlemen and cowboys and the era of the open range in western South Dakota through historic photographs, artifacts, music and art.

Where: The Journey Museum, Adelstein Gallery, 222 New York St., Rapid City

When: Today through March 22. A reception will be from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. today. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday.

Admission to the Adelstein Gallery exhibition is free. Regular admission prices to visit The Journey Museum are $7 for adults, $6 for seniors, $5 for children; children under the age of 10 are free.

Learn more at the Storyteller Series

The Journey Museum's upcoming Storyteller Series complements the "Fencing the West" exhibit. The eight topics will provide additional historical information to the six-month exhibit that chronicles the end of the open-range era.

Author Cathie Draine will speak about her book, "Cowboy Life: The Letters of George Philip." The book is a compilation of letters her grandfather wrote to his three children recounting his years as a cowboy on the range.

"'Cowboy Life' is to my knowledge either the only or one of the few books of reminiscences that has been scrupulously studied and had research done to develop an absolutely classic set of footnotes that accompany those letters that give credence to the memories," Draine said.

Deborah Gangloff said it was not uncommon for cowboys to write their memoirs decades later. "I think most of them wanted to record a way of life that no one would ever see again," she said. "These guys had a true culture. The cowboy way is truly a way. They did a good job out of pride. Pride of work. How often do you see that today?"

Donovin Sprague, director of education at Crazy Horse Memorial, will speak about members of his family and their impact on South Dakota history. His great- great- great-grandfather, Fred Dupree, is credited with saving the buffalo.

"Fred is in the South Dakota Hall of Fame for saving the buffalo from extinction," Sprague said. "He's full-blood French, and really it was his wife, Good Elk Woman, who knew the sacredness of what the buffalo meant. She should be in there easily. She was full-blood Lakota."

He also will discuss Narcisse Narcelle, the Benoist family and the early French connection and marriages into the Lakota.

Lyndell Petersen will speak about the history of cattle brands and moderate a contemporary issues panel discussion.

He said panel members will include Dan Lindbloom, who was the last manager of the Western Cattle Company. "We will also have Robert Schnell, who is part of the family that operated the auction market in Dickinson, N.D., as we transitioned from open range to what we have now."

Another panel person will be Jim Reed, who was recently the chief brand inspector. "He was a brand inspector for 40 years and his father was a brand inspector before him. Jim witnessed some of the transition also."

Draine recommends the Storyteller Series for anyone interested in learning more about the history of South Dakota.

"I would certainly think that high school students and college students who are interested in history would be well advised to come. Here's an opportunity to learn things and meet people that would be far out of their purview otherwise. I think the program is a phenomenal asset to the community and in many ways illustrates the living contemporary value of history."

If you go

What: The Storyteller Series presentations

Where: Wells Fargo Theater at The Journey Museum, 222 New York St.

When: 2 p.m. Sundays

Admission: $3 or free to museum members.

Here is the schedule:

Oct. 5 - "Indian Country to Cowboy Country: Treaties, Laws and Policies" with Charles Abourezk.

Oct. 26 - "Buffalo Gals," a play by Kristi Thielen about women on the open range.

Nov. 9 - "Sense of Place" and illustrating "Cowboy Life" with editor/author Cathie Draine and artist Mick Harrison.

Nov. 23 - An authors panel moderated by western historian and bookseller Dave Strain.

Nov. 30 - "The Duprees of Cheyenne River: Raising Cattle and Saving the Buffalo" with Donovin Sprague, Crazy Horse Memorial.

Jan. 25 - Strong women: Jessie Craven and the McGaa family ranch, by Casey Peterson.

Feb. 1 - History of brands and contemporary issues panel with former South Dakota Brands Board member Lyndell Petersen, moderator.

Feb. 8 - "Old Saddles and Cowboy Gear" with collector Jerry Croft.