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History of Stone Walls
Abandoned mill in western Massachusetts. There are no walls in the picture because the soil lacks stones. The history of stone walls is as complex as the people(s) who buiilt them.
SUMMARY Abandoned stone walls in the woods of New England have a long and fascinating history. Before their recent re-discovery, and before they began to tumble and decompose, the vast majority of stone walls had been built by early American farmers using stones that had heaved up from the subsoil after being buried for millennia by organic processes. All of this took place long after the stones had been glacially plucked from the bedrock and scattered over the landscape. The ice sheets responsible for distributing the boulders were merely scraping the surface of the hard, heavily fractured rocky crust of northeastern North America, which was created during the ancient episode of mountain building responsible for the Appalachians. The rock was made of minerals that were made from elements that were made from universal mater, that was captured by our solar system during formation of planet Earth. The story of stone walls begins with the beginning of everything, and ends with the present moment.
TEN EASY STEPS Making Matter It is self evident that a stone wall is made of matter, rather than of energy. However, there once was a time -- perhaps thirteen billion years ago -- when matter and energy, as well as time and place, were indistinguishable. Only after the first few moments of creation, and in ways we do not yet understand, did matter come into being.
Making Elements Initially, matter consisted of nothing more than the lightest element hydrogen, with minor helium. Heavier elements were produced later, either in stars undergoing nuclear fusion, or during times when stars exploded, events called supernovae. Elements are the basic building blocks of everything we can touch or hold, whether solid, liquid, or gas. Oxygen, for example, isn't just something we breathe. Instead, it is a common substance of minerals. Quartz, for example, consists of two elements: one part silicon and two parts oxygen. Lime, for example, consists of three elements: one part calcium, one part carbon, and three parts oxygen. All of the elements found in New England walls were present as stellar dust and debris when our present solar system formed, a process which created the earth about 4.6 billion years ago.
Making Rock A rock is an aggregate of one or more minerals, which are naturally occurring, inorganic, crystalline substances whose composition varies within specified limits. Most of the minerals making up the bedrock in New England were created when older materials such as mud, sand, and lava were transformed by heat and pressure -- sometimes to the melting stage -- during a prolonged episode of mountain building that created the Appalachians between 500 million and 300 million years ago. This episode spanned the interval when animals were evolving from sea to land, from the most primitive fish to archaic reptiles (dinosaurs and flowering plants did not yet exist).
Making Stones Deep in the earth's crust, the bedrock is an unbroken amalgam of discrete blocks of rock that were welded together within the roots of ancient mountains. To this day, there are no fractures or voids, and therefore no stones. During the last few tens of million of years, however, as the weight of eroded rocks was removed, the top mile or so of the of New England's crust expanded slightly, rupturing into billions of tightly nested fragments. This took place gradually, at a time when the great apes in east Africa were evolving first into hominids, then later to humans. Beginning less than a million years ago, giant ice sheets repeatedly oozed southward from Canada. When they encountered the bumpy bedrock surface of the New England interior, they plucked up countless boulders, crushing most of them into mud and sand. Uncrushed stones were scattered widely across the landscape, either embedded within the till (ground-up glacial debris), or concentrated at its surface. These are the stones -- produced between 150,000 and 15,000 years ago -- that would later end up in stone walls.
Burying Stones When the last ice sheet melted northward it uncovered a landscape that was dusty, rocky and barren. Gradually, plants invaded the surface as rock, dirt, and sand yielded to tundra which later gave way to a boreal parkland, then finally to a continuous forest. Over time, coniferous forest gave way to the largely deciduous forest, the one in which Native Americans lived for millennia, the one encountered by the first Europeans. In the fifteen thousand-year interlude between deglaciation and English settlement, rich forest soils developed on sand and silt, fractionated upward from the till, obscuring many of the stones beneath the surface. European settlers arrived at a time when the stones were most deeply buried.
Harvesting Stones The subsequent conversion of forest to farm precipitated great changes in the soil. Most important was the gradual loss of the organic mulch and black topsoil, that had previously helped insulate the subsoil from winter's cold. Loss of the insulating layer coincided with an interval known as the Little Ice Age, during which winters were colder than today. The combination of bare soil and cold climate enhanced the rate at which stones were heaved upward, out of the soil, by frost. Deep freezing also contributed to the loss of topsoil by erosion, especially during spring, because the rain has more difficulty infiltrating, and therefore had no alternative but to flow on the surface. For at least a generation of farmers, stones appeared at the surface like magic.
Stacking Stones The accumulation of stones in cleared fields, mowlands, and pastures required that they be removed. In an age before petroleum-powered heavy equipment, this was done either by hand or with the assistance of oxen and draft horses. Stones were seldom hauled any further than necessary, which usually meant the nearest fence line. Elongate piles of stone and primitive tossed walls grew up -- almost automatically -- as the stone being harvested and scuttled aside, year after year.
Making Walls Broadly speaking, the cultural prestige of farming in New England and its profitability began to decline after the 1830s following completion of the Erie Canal, construction of large mill-powered factories, and the spread of early railroads. Before the tide turned, however, rural upland farmers experienced several decades of great prosperity, one that coincided with a movement towards scientific farming, a surplus of labor, and rural population growth. During this interval, even as pioneering farmsteads were being created in more remote regions, many of the ragged walls that had accumulated in earlier settlements were rebuilt into more aesthetically pleasing forms, especially by wealthy farmers and early industrialists.
Abandonment By the 1880s, thousands of rural farms had been abandoned, especially in upland terrain removed from growing industrial cities. Those stone walls not already enveloped by forest were often quarried for the stone they contained for use in bridges, canals, and piers, or crushed for road sub-grade. Walls on remaining working farms were often destroyed to create larger fields or to drain the land. The invention of concrete, the allure of all things urban, and the steadily growing secondary forest rendered abandoned walls into an almost forgotten phenomenon. Meanwhile, the walls tumbled and crusted over with lichens, the trees grew larger, and dryland stone habitats were colonized by a wide array of creatures that would otherwise have no place to live. Walls also kept patches of forest discrete, keeping the woods more diverse.
Reclamation Beginning in the first decades of the 20th century, and accelerating toward the present, rural farmstead walls have become cultural icons to the origin of America as a nation, as well as a reminder of the slower, simpler life before the modern era. The allure of stone walls, especially old and time-tarnished ones led to their building and reconstruction on many properties, rural properties reclaimed during the last half century. The allure of walls is so great, however, that they are increasingly being pulled apart and shipped via interstate highway to make newer walls in wealthier places. In the process, habitat is being lost, and the authenticity of place is being compromised. Efforts are now being made to investigate and preserve old stone walls. |
