Editing Sterling County, Texas (section)

===Open rangeland===

During the era of the open range, the acreage owned by the large land and cattle outfits did not adjoin other pasturelands that were already owned, creating a checkered pattern of land ownership. This pattern was attributed to the system that allocated land between the railway companies and the State of Texas. The railway companies were given the odd-numbered sections (surveys), contingent upon surveying the entire block of land (townships), and the state retained ownership of the even-numbered sections. Thus, for each section it received, a railroad company had to survey an adjoining 640 acres for the state, and the railway companies were required to sell the land within 12 years of the initial survey. As a result, the large cattle ranches, often having the earliest presence in the area, initially consisted only of the odd-numbered sections within each block until adjoining acreage was acquired from the State of Texas, such as those lands sold by the Common School Fund.

The checkered pattern of land ownership did not create many problems during the time of the open range, as the large cattle outfits “controlled” vast amounts of open rangeland for grazing and could move cattle from pasture to pasture without having to compensate any other land owner or even the State.

However, after the large influx of settlers, the building of fences, and the restricted access to surface waters during drought, tensions escalated between the settlers and established cattle outfits and eventually lead to the Fence Cutting Wars.