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Geography of StoneWalls
Classification of StoneWalls
Primitive wall above ledge. Boothbay Harvor, Maine.

Geography of Stone Walls

 

One of several maps reproduced at larger scale below to help you understand stone wall geography.

 

PHOTO GALLERY FROM AROUND THE REGION

To see examples of stone walls from different parts of the New England region, link to the Photo Gallery.

 

STONE WALL PROVINCES

A stone wall province is an area, generally of town to county-scale, where the fieldstone walls are similar in form, due to the combination of three critical factors:

  • Bedrock geology
  • Glacial History
  • Land Use History

The following maps are color versions of the black and white illustrations from the book Exploring Stone Walls ( reproduced with permission from Walker & Company, 2005). The explanatory text is not reproduced here.

To determine the type of stone wall in any given area, locate that spot on the location grid. Then determine the type of bedrock, type of surficial materials, and type of settlement history for that spot, on each of the three respective maps. Then, referring to the text of Exploring Stone Walls, determine which type of stone wall province contains those types of rock and surface process. Finally, read the description of what the most common type of stone walls should be in that area.