Across The Fence: The Spring Creek Raid

Ten Sleep, Wyoming, is situated in the western foothills of the Big Horn Mountains near a tiny tributary of the Bighorn River named Spring Creek. Little more than a couple of dozen miles due east of Worland, Wyoming the Spring Creek area was designated as sheep range in the 1890s by an agreed upon imaginary boundary called a "deadline." From the deadline, cattlemen grazed their herds to the west, sheep men tended their flocks to the east and serious consequences lay in store for sheep men who crossed the line.

Wyoming has long been regarded as cattle country, and rightfully so. In 1870 the cat...