Primer

Abandoned stone walls are the signature of the rural New England Landscape. They are cultural ruins, woodland habitat, and pleasant scenery, all in the same package. This web page is designed for those who are just being introduced to the subject.

ORIGIN OF STONE WALLS

Abandoned stone walls in the woods of New England have a long and fascinating story. Before their recent re-discovery in the middle 20th century, and before they began to tumble and decompose in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, 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.

Link to an expanded version of this history in Ten Easy Steps.

Link to Frequently Asked Questions about stone walls.

Link to the Purpose of Stone Walls, then and now.