Publication Date
3-2007
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.
Publication Title
Journal Of Economic History
Volume
67
Issue
1
First Page
69
Last Page
92
DOI
10.1017/S0022050707000034
Open Access Status
OA Deposit
Recommended Citation
Wills, Doug and McFerrin, Randy, "High Noon On the Western Range: A Property Rights Analysis of the Johnson County War" (2007). Business Publications. 2.
https://digitalcommons.tacoma.uw.edu/business_pub/2
Included in
Economic History Commons, Property Law and Real Estate Commons, United States History Commons
Comments
© 2007 Cambridge University Press. Available on publisher’s site at http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0022050707000034.