In the old days of early rural settlement, like today, local counties, schools and towns required money to provide essential services to the public. Court officials were needed to process the legalities of land ownership, uphold the law and settle disputes, record marriages, deaths and births and educate the public and their offspring when possible. To meet these basic needs, taxes were used to provide the money.
Taxes were simple at first as little money was needed. As the population grew, more services were required. Within a few years taxes were imposed on every homestead improvement and on every head of livestock owned.
The new barbed wire fences were a favorite target of tax assessors. Most of the fences were installed by the big ranchers, (damned foreigners), and it seemed no one liked the new invention in the first place. The new fences were visible and hard to hide and it soon became a necessary evil to pay taxes on the improvement. Also, everyone knew to the penney what a new fence cost so the tax man had no problems with assessing the value.
Wheeler, the first county in the Texas Panhandle, began assessing taxes as soon as there were enough people to pay. A typical list of early personal property in the new county stated the following items. With the tax rate set at 25 cents per $100 valuation, stock horses were valued at $30 per head, good cow horses at $50, work horses at $50, work oxen at $60 per yoke, (pair), cattle $10 per head, and land values were assessed at $1.50 to $3.00 per acre. Barbed wire fences were valued at $40 per mile.
With these values in mind, a typical homesteader with 160 acres, a team of work horses, two riding horses, a small frame house or soddy, 20 cows and two miles of barbed wire fence around his 160 acres would pay approximately $2.80 in annual taxes. With the times tough and the winter blizzards hard, that small amount was probably just as difficult to pay as our modern day taxes.
