The Wire That Tamed the West — and the Museum That Tells Its Story
On the eastern edge of McLean, Texas, on a stretch of Historic Route 66 that runs straight and flat through the Texas Panhandle, two giant balls of rust-red barbed wire rest on limestone pedestals outside a cinder-block building. Each ball is three feet in diameter, wound tight from hundreds of feet of wire, and they are the most efficient welcome sign imaginable: this is the Devil’s Rope Museum — the largest barbed wire collection in the world, the first Route 66 museum on the entire highway, and one of the most unexpectedly rewarding stops on any road trip through Texas.
Inside the building — which once produced 5,000 brassieres a day for Sears Roebuck and earned McLean the nickname “The Uplift Town” — two museums share 6,000 square feet of exhibition space. The Devil’s Rope Museum fills the majority of the building with more than 2,000 varieties of barbed wire, fencing tools, ranching artifacts, Dust Bowl photographs, War Wire, barbed wire art, and the most complete collection of published barbed wire research anywhere on earth. Adjacent to it, the Texas Route 66 Museum packs more than 700 artifacts from the Mother Road’s golden era into a room that visitors consistently describe as stuffed to the rafters with memorabilia, vintage signage, and irreplaceable roadside history.
The two museums opened together in 1991, founded by retired Panhandle rancher and barbed wire collector Delbert Trew along with several hundred fellow collectors who wanted to establish a permanent home for their collections on a well-traveled highway. They chose McLean and they chose Route 66, and the result is a museum that has been welcoming travelers, international tourists, barbed wire devotees, and Route 66 pilgrims for more than three decades. Admission is free. The museum survives on donations.
Where Is the Devil’s Rope Museum?
100 South Kingsley Street, McLean, Texas 79057. The museum is located on the south side of Historic Route 66 (also signed as I-40 Business / 1st Street) on the eastern edge of McLean, easily visible from the road. McLean sits in Gray County in the eastern Texas Panhandle, approximately 75 miles east of Amarillo and 100 miles west of Amarillo’s Oklahoma border counterpart, Shamrock. From Interstate 40, use Exits 141, 142, or 143 and follow the Business Route (Historic Route 66) into town.
The museum is the most prominent stop on Route 66 in McLean and serves as headquarters for the Old Route 66 Association of Texas. Two streets in McLean — Rowe Street and Kingsley Street (on which the museum sits) — are named for Alfred Rowe and his wife Constance Ethel Kingsley, honoring the English rancher who donated the land on which the town was built in 1901 and who perished aboard the RMS Titanic in April 1912.
McLean, Texas: The Town Behind the Museum
A British Rancher, a Railroad Town, and a Titanic Connection
McLean’s origins are as dramatic as the Panhandle landscape it sits in. In 1901, the Chicago, Rock Island and Gulf Railway established a switch in Gray County, and English rancher Alfred Rowe — owner of the massive 200,000-acre RO Ranch near Clarendon — donated 640 acres of his land to lay out a townsite. The town was named for Texas legislator and Railroad Commissioner William P. McLean. Within a few years McLean had two banks, two livery stables, a lumber yard, a newspaper, and a windmill pumping water from a well in the middle of Main Street. Rowe Street and Kingsley Street remember both Alfred and his wife.
Alfred Rowe commuted between Texas and England, returning twice a year to manage the ranch. On his April 1912 return voyage to the United States, he booked passage on a newly launched luxury liner. He perished in the sinking of the RMS Titanic in the early hours of April 15, 1912 — refusing to board a lifeboat, according to accounts, and dying of exposure. His body was recovered and buried in Liverpool. Rowe never saw the town his generosity had created reach its greatest prosperity. That prosperity came soon after.
Route 66 Arrives: Uplift City and the Golden Era
Oil discoveries in the mid-1920s and the arrival of U.S. Route 66 in McLean in 1927 drove the town to its peak. By 1940 the population had reached 1,500. At the height of the highway era, McLean boasted 16 service stations, six motels, car dealerships, restaurants, and a movie theater — more gas stations per capita than any other town in Texas. In 1950, Sears Roebuck built a brassiere factory in McLean that employed approximately 100 women producing up to 5,000 garments a day, earning the community its cheerful nickname: “The Uplift Town” or “Uplift City.” The factory closed in the early 1970s. The building sat empty for nearly two decades before Delbert Trew and the barbed wire collectors arrived with a different plan.
World War II: The Fritz Ritz
During World War II, McLean hosted a prisoner of war camp several miles outside of town, constructed in September 1942. The first prisoners, captured in North Africa, had served in General Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps. By October 1944 the camp held over 3,000 German prisoners of war, housed in nearly 30 buildings that included quarters for officers and nurses, a hospital, theater, laundry, post exchange, and barber shop. Locals nicknamed it the “Fritz Ritz.” It closed in July 1945. A historical marker on County Road 5280 (Exit 146 off I-40, approximately two miles east of McLean) marks the site, which has since returned to agriculture.
The Bypass and the Revival
Interstate 40 bypassed McLean between 1982 and 1984 — the last Texas Route 66 town to be bypassed. Residents and business owners fought hard to prevent it, knowing what had happened to other Panhandle towns when the interstate traffic moved on. Their fears were justified. McLean went from 48 active businesses to 16 nearly overnight. Population fell and has continued to fall to approximately 800 today. Yet McLean’s very stillness — the consequence of the bypass — also preserved it. The McLean Commercial Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2004, recognizing the exceptional integrity of its downtown commercial buildings. And in 1991, the Devil’s Rope Museum opened in the old bra factory and gave travelers a reason to leave the interstate again.
The Devil’s Rope Museum: Barbed Wire and the American West
Why “Devil’s Rope”?
The name comes from the Native Americans who first encountered the wire on the Panhandle plains. To the Comanche and other Plains tribes whose raiding trails and hunting ranges the new fences blocked and divided, the sharp two-stranded wire that white settlers were stringing across the open grasslands was something menacing and incomprehensible. They called it “the Devil’s rope” — a name that stuck, was adopted by religious groups who viewed the wire as cruel, and eventually became the chosen name of this museum.
The Invention That Changed Everything: Joseph Glidden’s 1874 Patent
Barbed wire had been the subject of competing designs and experiments since the early 1870s, but the product that transformed the American West was Joseph F. Glidden’s patented design of November 24, 1874 — two strands of wire twisted together with sharp, evenly spaced barbs locked between them. Glidden’s design was simple, strong, cheap to manufacture, and devastatingly effective. Within six years of his patent, more than 620,000 miles of barbed wire stretched across the West. The consequences were epochal: the open range that had defined the Panhandle since the buffalo herds were exterminated was divided, fenced, and claimed. Cattle drives that had moved Longhorn herds north to railheads were rendered impossible. The Longhorn itself — bred for open range travel — was displaced by breeds suited to enclosed pastures. The raiding trails of Plains tribes were blocked. The Homestead Act’s promise of 160 acres per settler was made physically real by the wire that could mark the boundary of “this is mine, this is yours.”
As barbed wire salesman John “Bet a Million” Gates memorably put it in an 1877 San Antonio demonstration: “It’s lighter than air, stronger than whiskey, and cheaper than dirt!” His demonstration ended with cowboys chasing terrified Longhorns into a barbed wire corral. The steers bashed the fence and fell back. Texas cattlemen became believers.
The Collection: Over 2,000 Varieties and 450 Patents
The museum’s barbed wire collection is organized on walls covered with wire samples mounted in the spokes of wagon wheels — each strand tagged, identified, and dated. The U.S. government has issued patents for more than 800 types of barbed wire, and collectors have identified more than 2,000 distinct varieties, most of which are represented in the museum’s holdings. Large padlocked display cases protect the rarest specimens — including the Cocklebur and the Dodge Star — which command hundreds of dollars for just a few inches of wire among serious collectors. The museum’s reference library contains extensive research material on more than 450 barbed wire patents and is used by researchers and educators as the definitive repository of published barbed wire documentation. The collection is thought to be the largest such library in the world.
Fencing Tools, Ranching Heritage, and the Evolution of the Cowboy
Beyond the wire itself, the museum documents the entire ecosystem of fencing on the Panhandle plains. Exhibits include the full range of fencing tools — wire stretchers, cutters, mauls, post drivers, staple hammers, and fence riders’ equipment — as well as limestone fence posts (a Panhandle innovation born of the absence of trees) and salesman sample cases that traveling wire salesmen used to demonstrate their wares to potential customers. One of the museum’s most popular demonstrations involves a home-built device assembled from windmill parts on which visitors can watch fresh barbed wire being produced.
Hundreds of cattle brands are displayed, classified by time period, documenting how brand registration evolved alongside property law and fencing. The evolution of cowboy tools is traced across the transition from open range to fenced range — the moment when the cowboy’s job changed from driving free-roaming cattle to managing enclosed herds. Profiles of major ranchers and barbed wire manufacturers and inventors round out the ranching heritage section.
War Wire: The Dark Side of the Devil’s Rope
A dedicated exhibit explores War Wire — military barbed wire designed for entirely different purposes than ranch wire. Where ranch wire was engineered to inconvenience cattle without injuring them (damaging hides reduces the value of the animal), War Wire was designed to do maximum damage to human flesh. The museum’s War Wire collection includes examples from World War I trench warfare, World War II, and other conflicts, along with the specialized tools designed to cut through it under fire. The exhibit is sobering — a reminder that the same basic technology that built the American West also defined the killing grounds of 20th-century warfare.
The Dust Bowl Exhibit
One room of the museum is dedicated to the Dust Bowl — the environmental catastrophe that devastated the Texas Panhandle during the 1930s when years of drought and over-plowing turned topsoil into vast clouds of dust that blackened the sky and buried farms. The exhibit uses original photographs, documents, and artifacts to document the human cost of the disaster and its connection to the broader story of land use, fencing, and agricultural transformation on the Panhandle plains. Visitors consistently describe this room as one of the most affecting in the museum — the photographs alone make the scale of the catastrophe viscerally real in a way that text descriptions cannot.
Barbed Wire Art: From Jackrabbits to a Barbed Wire Bra
The museum’s barbed wire art collection is one of its most visually striking features and a section designed with the stated purpose of broadening the museum’s appeal beyond the core collector audience. Dozens of sculptures created from wire include life-size animals — a jackrabbit, a coyote, a rattlesnake, an armadillo (with a spring for a tail) — as well as a barbed wire cowboy hat and numerous smaller pieces. The museum’s signature art object is a barbed wire bra, created as a tribute to the building’s origin as a brassiere factory. Much of the art was made by Delbert Trew himself; some pieces were contributed by artists from across the Southwest.
The Texas Route 66 Museum
The Texas Route 66 Museum, which shares the building with the Devil’s Rope collection, holds the distinction of being the first Route 66 museum established anywhere on the route — predating the many dedicated Mother Road museums that followed. It opened in 1991 alongside the barbed wire collection and has been collecting and displaying Texas Route 66 artifacts ever since. The museum is also the home of the Old Route 66 Association of Texas, which publishes the Texas Route 66 Newsletter quarterly and advocates for the preservation and recognition of the Texas stretch of the highway.
The Route 66 room contains more than 700 artifacts from the golden era of the Mother Road, packed into a space that visitors repeatedly describe as gloriously overstuffed. The collection includes:
Original road signs and advertising souvenirs from the Texas stretch of Route 66, including Burma Shave signs, vintage postcards, and promotional items from now-vanished roadside businesses.
The original Big Texan Steak Ranch steer — the full-size fiberglass longhorn that once stood as the sentinel outside the Big Texan Steak Ranch in Amarillo before being replaced. This is one of the most recognizable artifacts of Texas Route 66 commercial history.
The Giant Yellow Cobra from the Regal Reptile Ranch in Alanreed — a life-size fiberglass serpent that was the signature attraction of a now-demolished roadside reptile exhibit between McLean and Amarillo.
The Texas Route 66 Hall of Fame, honoring the individuals and institutions that shaped the Texas stretch of the Mother Road.
A faux Greasy Spoon Café replica built inside the museum — a full-scale recreation of the kind of roadside diner that fed generations of Route 66 travelers across the Panhandle.
Vintage motel signage, including a light-up motel sign from one of McLean’s vanished Route 66 motor courts.
Curator Leigh Anne Isbell, who manages the Route 66 collection, articulates the museum’s philosophy: “Route 66 is special to me because it’s our town. Working at the museum, we learn from travelers and they learn from us. Route 66 connects rural towns to the rest of the country, and it still connects travelers to each other today.”
The Building: From Bra Factory to Devil’s Rope
The museum building has its own story that rivals the collections inside it. In 1950, Sears Roebuck built a brassiere factory in McLean — a cinder-block manufacturing facility that employed approximately 100 local women producing up to 5,000 garments per day. The factory gave McLean economic stability during the years when Route 66 was still the main highway through the Panhandle and gave the community its enduring nickname. Women working the production line earned a dollar for an eight-hour shift; some local residents recall their mothers or grandmothers receiving small, fancy samples as gifts.
The factory closed in the early 1970s when Sears consolidated its manufacturing operations. The building sat empty and unused for nearly two decades — a large cinder-block shell in a town that was struggling to redefine itself after Route 66 was bypassed. Then Delbert Trew and several hundred barbed wire collectors from across the country found it. They had been looking for a location on a well-traveled highway in a climate-stable environment — preferably somewhere more accessible than LaCrosse, Kansas, home of the Antique Barbed Wire Society but 25 miles from the nearest interstate. The old bra factory in McLean, sitting right on Historic Route 66, was exactly what they needed.
The museum opened in March 1991. The building’s history has not been forgotten: the barbed wire bra in the sculpture collection is the museum’s most deliberate tribute to its predecessor. The transformation of the Uplift Town’s uplifting factory into a museum dedicated to the wire that tamed the West is one of the better second-act stories on the entire Mother Road.
More to See in McLean, Texas
The Restored 1928 Phillips 66 Station
At 219 Gray Street (the westbound lane of Historic Route 66), a beautifully restored Phillips 66 service station built around 1928 stands as one of the most photographed buildings in McLean. The cottage-style Tudor Revival building features a red roof, a brick chimney, and period-accurate rounded orange gas pumps priced — for display purposes — at 19 cents a gallon. This was the first Phillips 66 station built in Texas, and it operated for more than 50 years. It is one of the jewels of the McLean Commercial Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2004.
The McLean–Alanreed Area Historical Museum
At 116 North Main Street, the McLean–Alanreed Area Historical Museum documents the full sweep of local history: pioneer life, ranching, the Rock Island Railroad, oil and gas exploration, and the World War II POW camp that locals called the Fritz Ritz. The museum contains original artifacts from the camp — mugs, artwork, a piano that was played there — as well as pioneer costumes, farming equipment, period barber shop equipment, and quilts made by area settlers. Alfred Rowe’s story is told here in full. Open Monday through Friday.
The Cactus Inn Motel
At 101 Pine Street, the Cactus Inn Motel — built in 1956 and still welcoming guests — is one of the last surviving Route 66 motor courts in the eastern Panhandle. Its large emerald green and yellow cactus neon sign is one of the finest surviving pieces of Route 66 roadside signage in McLean. Rooms run approximately $45–55 per night.
The Red River Steakhouse
Next door to the Cactus Inn at 101 West Highway 66, the Red River Steakhouse is the recommended dining stop in McLean. Hand-cut rib eyes, Texas-sized portions, and house cobbler. Open Tuesday through Saturday, 11 a.m.–9 p.m.
The POW Camp Historical Marker
The site of McLean’s World War II German prisoner of war camp is marked by a historical marker at the northwest corner of County Road 5280 (County Line Road) and Z Road, accessible by taking Exit 146 on I-40 approximately two miles east of McLean, then driving one mile north. Nothing remains of the camp buildings — the land has returned to agriculture — but the marker tells the full story of the camp and its more than 3,000 German prisoners.
The Route 66 McLean Mural
A vibrant mural in downtown McLean commemorates Route 66 and its impact on the community, depicting scenes from the highway’s heyday alongside portraits of the Panhandle landscape. It is one of the most photographed public art installations in the eastern Panhandle and a worthy photo stop alongside the Phillips 66 station.
Practical Information for Visiting the Devil’s Rope Museum
Address: 100 South Kingsley Street, McLean, Texas 79057
Phone: (806) 779-2225
Website: barbwiremuseum.com
Hours: Monday–Saturday, 9:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m., March through October. Closed Sundays. Closed November through February. Hours may vary — call ahead, especially for shoulder-season visits.
Admission: Free. The museum survives on donations; a contribution of any size is welcomed and appreciated.
Note on Heat: The building does not have air conditioning. Museum staff may close for the day if temperatures exceed 100°F. Check the weather forecast before visiting during summer months.
Directions from I-40: Take Exit 141, 142, or 143 and follow Business Route 66 / Historic Route 66 (1st Street) into McLean. The museum is on the right (south side of the road) on the eastern edge of town, visible from the highway. Look for the two giant barbed wire balls on limestone pedestals.
Accessibility: Wheelchairs available at the museum. Restrooms on site.
Annual Event: The museum hosts the Barbed Wire Collectors’ Reunion and Wildcat Swap Meet each spring — typically in April. The event draws barbed wire collectors from across the country for trading, demonstrations, and displays. Check the museum’s Facebook page or barbwiremuseum.com for current dates.
Photography: The two barbed wire ball sculptures on limestone pedestals are the classic exterior shot. Inside, the wagon-wheel wire display panels, the War Wire exhibit, and the Dust Bowl photographs offer strong compositional material. The vintage Route 66 signage in the Texas Route 66 Museum room is best in available light from the door.
Time Required: Allow a minimum of 60–90 minutes. Many visitors plan for a quick stop and discover they need two hours or more. The museum is larger and more comprehensive than its modest exterior suggests.
McLean Commercial Historic District Walking Circuit: After the museum, allow 30–45 minutes to walk or drive McLean’s one-way historic Route 66 alignment and see the restored Phillips 66 station, the downtown commercial buildings, the Route 66 mural, and the Cactus Inn.
Continuing Your Route 66 Journey from McLean
McLean sits on the eastern end of the Texas Panhandle Route 66 corridor, with the full sweep of Route 66 in Texas extending west through the Panhandle plains. To the east, the highway crosses into Oklahoma at Shamrock; to the west, it runs through Conway, Groom, Amarillo, Vega, and Adrian before reaching the New Mexico border at Glenrio.
Route 66 in McLean, Texas — Complete Guide — The full overview of McLean’s Route 66 heritage, including the restored Phillips 66 station, the McLean–Alanreed Museum, the Cactus Inn, and the historic commercial district.
Amarillo, Texas on Route 66 — Approximately 75 miles west of McLean, Amarillo is the major city on Texas’s Route 66 corridor. Home to Cadillac Ranch, the Big Texan Steak Ranch, and the 6th Street Historic District.
Cadillac Ranch, Amarillo — The iconic public art installation just west of Amarillo where ten half-buried Cadillacs, painted and repainted by visitors for decades, define the spirit of Route 66 roadside art.
The Big Texan Steak Ranch, Amarillo — Route 66’s legendary 72-ounce steak challenge restaurant in Amarillo, home of the original Big Texan steer whose fiberglass replacement now stands in the Devil’s Rope Museum.
6th Street Historic District, Amarillo — The most intact historic Route 66 business corridor in Texas, lined with antique shops, vintage neon signs, galleries, and classic cafés along the original alignment.
Vega, Texas on Route 66 — About 60 miles west of McLean, Vega preserves Route 66 architecture along its Main Street, including the restored Vega Motel and Dot’s Mini Museum.
Midpoint Café, Adrian, Texas — About 90 miles west of McLean, the Midpoint Café in Adrian marks the exact geographic halfway point of Route 66 — 1,139 miles from both Chicago and Los Angeles. Famous for Ugly Crust Pies and its connection to Pixar’s Cars.
Route 66 in Texas — Complete Guide — The full overview of all 178 miles of the Mother Road through the Texas Panhandle, from Shamrock to Glenrio.
Route 66 — Complete Guide — The definitive guide to all 2,448 miles of America’s Mother Road, from the Begin sign in Chicago to the End of the Trail at the Santa Monica Pier.
Route 66 Centennial 2026 — The 100th anniversary of Route 66 is November 11, 2026. The Devil’s Rope Museum and the McLean Texas Panhandle corridor are central to the centennial celebrations.
Why the Devil’s Rope Museum Is Worth the Stop
Every Route 66 traveler has the experience of pulling off for something that sounds like a novelty — a giant ball of twine, a two-headed calf, a museum dedicated to a single industrial product — and discovering something genuinely important. The Devil’s Rope Museum is that experience at its best.
Barbed wire is not just a fencing material. It is the technology that closed the American frontier, that ended the open range and the cattle drives and the freedom of movement that defined the pre-industrial West. It is also the technology that enabled the small farmers and homesteaders whose land claims made American democracy in the West a physical reality. It defined property, it enforced law, it shaped the landscape, and it did all of this for less than the cost of a wooden fence post per foot of boundary. When J.F. Glidden patented his design in 1874, he changed the West as profoundly as the railroad or the Colt revolver.
The museum that Delbert Trew and his fellow collectors built in the old bra factory in McLean tells that story with depth, specificity, and genuine passion. It does so for free, on Route 66, in a town that was nearly extinguished by the interstate and chose to define itself by what it knew and loved. Seventy percent of the museum’s visitors are international travelers coming off the Mother Road — Europeans and Australians and Japanese tourists who have driven all 2,448 miles of Historic Route 66 and find here, in this small Texas Panhandle town, something they have never encountered before: the story of how a two-stranded wire with sharp barbs changed a continent.
As Delbert Trew said: “Barbed wire teaches you. You don’t need but one lesson.”
