The Johnson County War, also known as the War on Powder River and the Wyoming Range War, was a range conflict that took place in Johnson County, Wyoming from 1889 to 1893. The conflict began when cattle companies started ruthlessly persecuting alleged rustlers in the area, many of whom were settlers who competed with them for livestock, land and water rights. As violence swelled between the large established ranchers and the smaller settlers in the state, it culminated in the Powder River Country when the former hired gunmen to invade the county. The gunmen's initial incursion in the territory alerted the small farmers and ranchers, as well as the state lawmen, and they formed a posse of 200 men that led to a grueling stand-off. The siege ended when the United States Cavalry on the orders of President Benjamin Harrison relieved the two forces, although further fighting persisted in the following months. The events have since become a highly mythologized and symbolic story of the Wild West and over the years variations of the story have come to include some of its most famous historical figures. In addition to being one of the best-known range wars of the American frontier, its themes, especially class warfare, served as a basis for numerous popular novels, films and television shows in the Western genre. Background Conflict over land was a common occurrence in the development of the American West, but was particularly prevalent during the late 19th century, when large portions of the West were being settled by new immigrants for the first time through the Homestead Acts. It is a period that one historian, Richard Maxwell Brown, has called the "Western Civil War of Incorporation", of which the Johnson County War was a part. In the early days of Wyoming most of the land was in public domain, which was open to stock raising as an open range and farmlands for homesteading. Large numbers of cattle were turned loose on the open range by large ranches. Each spring, round-ups were held to separate the cattle belonging to different ranches. Before a round-up, an orphan or stray calf was sometimes surreptitiously branded, which was the common way to identify the cow's owners. Lands and water rights were usually distributed to whoever settled the property first, and farmers and ranchers had to respect these boundaries (the doctrine was known as Prior Appropriation). However, as