About SWI

Boulders (probably from a gravel excavation) dumped at the end of a driveway in western MA. What do you think will happen next?

The Stone Wall Initiative promotes the appreciation, investigation, and conservation of stone walls in New England. The SWI emphasizes the cultural, natural, and aesthetic resources provided by historic walls, which are the closest thing New England has to classical ruins.

To contact us, just Link to Contacts.

OFFICE

Administratively, the SWI is part of the Connecticut State Museum of Natural History, which is supported by the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Connecticut. There is no physical presence. Rather, it is a web-based clearing house where new ideas and news items are posted, and a website devoted to education. The server is hosted by the NEAG School of Education at the Univeristy of Connecticut. Though coordinated by Robert M. Thorson, the content of this web site represents the collective work of many individuals.

GEOGRAPHIC SCOPE

Though housed in a state museum of natural history, the SWI is emphatically regional. SWI programs have taken place in all six New England states. Regular users are heavily concentrated in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New York east of the Hudson River and Long Island. [See Maps]. The SWI seeks coordination with similar projects in other states.

Recognizing that the United States landscape is the sum of its regional geographies (the plural is from the writer Barry Lopez), the SWI has correspondents many other U.S. states where residents have local exposure to distinctive stone walls. The national significance of stone walls has been highlighted by the National Trust for Historical Preservation in Washington D.C, which publishes, Preservation, its national magazine. Stories by the Associated Press and NPR have also featured the initiative. .

Though hard to belive, bricks are commonly found in stone walls, in part because this technology arrived with the English in the early 17th century. Their presence in walls demonstrates that land use history is long and complex.

HISTORY

The SWI was co-founded by Robert Thorson and Kristine Thorson during the summer of 2002 to coincide with publication of Stone by Stone: The Magnificent History In New England Stone Walls (Robert M. Thorson, Walker & Company, New York). This book adopted a more scientific approach to understanding stone walls, argued for their greater protection as a cultural and ecological resources, and encouraged readers to respond and share with each other. The original purpose of the SWI was to provide an easy way to manage reader feedback and to help support the book's policy objective -- stone wall conservation.

Nearly two thousand individuals have since contacted the SWI with a letter or email. Thousands more have heard Professor Thorson give Programs at their community gatherings, annual meetings, schools, and conventions. Thousands, perhaps even millions, more have read articles and reviews in newspapers and magazines, seen him on television, or heard him on NPR radio affiliates.

It took three years for the SWI to get out an email neswletter to its members; an informal regional coalition of property owners, local historians, nature seekers, officers of federal and state agencies, historical and archaeological societies, cultural resource managers, museums, land trusts, architects, scientists, teachers, and individuals empowered to advocate for conservation of what is increasingly being recognized as a cultural and ecological commons. Along the way came publication of Exploring Stone Walls: A Field Guide to New England's Stone Walls. (Walker & Company, 2005). This book was written to provide answers to thousands of questions asked of Professor Thorson by stone wall enthusiasts. Its purpose was: (1) to lay the groundwork for a science of stone walls; (2) to provide a language for describing and classifying walls for the purpose of inventory and management, and (3) to stimulate the New England culture-tourism economy.

To strengthen its public outreach and archival efforts, the SWI merged with the Connecticut State Museum of Natural History in the spring of 2005, operating out of the ormer Office of the State Archaeologist. The SWI also established a mutual commitment with the TNE Project (Teachers for a New Era) at the University of Connecticut, funded by the Carnegie Institution of New York. Recently, the SWI has been working with the University of Connecticut Foundation to help fund it's state and national goals.

At the present time, and due to the lack of staff and over-commitments on the part of the coordinator, the list-serve is no longer active. Instead, interested parties can simply check the news section of the SWI for updates.