Tickets on sale for tour of barbed wire factories

DeKALB – Glidden Homestead will host the annual Barbed Wire Walking Tour of the DeKalb barbed wire factories on Sunday.

For fans of Dekalb history, manufacturing, and barbed wire, this tour is a must.

The tour will leave at 2 p.m. from the Embree parking lot on Second Street in DeKalb. The tour will discuss the exterior of Glidden and Ellwood’s earliest barbed wire factory and historic buildings along the way, and will end with a tour of the interior of the historic Ellwood factory at Fourth and Locust streets (the former Mooney Building).

The Ellwood factory was designed by local architect J.R. Waldron and completed in 1882. The massive output of the factory was driven by the more than 200 barbed wire machines there. The building ceased to be used for barbed wire production when manufacturing was moved from DeKalb in the mid-1930s.

Joseph Glidden developed barbed wire in DeKalb in 1873 and went on to patent numerous other inventions.

Barbed wire production continued at the Homestead site through the winter of 1873 into the spring of 1874, when the operation moved into town.

Tickets cost $15. To register or for more information, call the Glidden Homestead at 815-756-7904 or email info@gliddenhomestead.org.