Lacrosse, Kansas: Kansas Barbed Wired Museum

Everything you ever wanted to know about barbed wire is here. Over 2,000 varieties are on display. Don't lean against the exhibits.

Barbed Wired Museum

At the Barbed Wired Museum, we got a demonstration of how the first barb maker worked. It was made from a modified coffee grinder.

[Katharine Chestnut, 07/01/2010]

Kansas Barbed Wire Museum

If you like barbed wire, or if you're in any way involved with ranching and want to know more about barbed wire, this museum is for you! I never knew that barbed wire came in so many different varieties. Did you know that there's a different style of barbed wire for horse fences than for cattle fences? Antique and modern fencing tools as well as barbed wire samples are on display as well as a few truly unique exhibits, such as the raven's nest made of mostly barbed wire. Call ahead to make sure of the hours. The museum is manned by volunteers so call ahead to find out when someone will be around. Numbers are posted on the door in case visitors arrive outside of museum hours.

[Karen Schleusener, 08/15/2003]

Barbed Wired Museum

No visit to Kansas could possibly be complete without a visit to Lacrosse. Here, on the same grounds, are both the Barbed Wire and Post Rock museums. The Barbed Wired Museum imparts a variety of little known facts that have been intentionally kept from generations of American schoolchildren: who knew, for instance, that Barbed Wire collecting is America's fasting growing hobby?

Similarly, the Post Rock Museum chronicles the ingenuity of early Plains farmers who, lacking available wood, looked around and noticed a surfeit of rocks just waitin' to be strung with (what else?) barbed wire.

[Todd Smith, 04/24/1998]