Ruins

Forests contain many interesting features: botanical, zoological, geological and historical. It was a day in early spring on a gentle hillside deep in the forest when I visited a site that I’d been to several times over the years. This site was of historical interest, an old farmstead that shows as the home of J. Bowers on an 1873 map of the area.

J. Bowers had a farm with acres of cleared fields bordered by stone walls and stonerows. His corner of the world shows up well on Lidar images of the area –

The features are labeled in this copy so you can more easily interpret the image –

For those of you who may not be familiar with Lidar here’s a brief explanation from NOAA –

Lidar, which stands for Light Detection and Ranging, is a remote sensing method that uses light in the form of a pulsed laser to measure ranges (variable distances) to the Earth. These light pulses—combined with other data recorded by the airborne system— generate precise, three-dimensional information about the shape of the Earth and its surface characteristics.

Lidar can “see” through foliage to show the surface below: in this case the roads, stone walls, old cellar holes, stream channels, and hummocks in the forests and old fields.

Walking one of the old roads to the remains of J. Bowers’ homestead I passed between the stonerows that formed the boundary between the road and the adjacent fields –

Closer to the farmstead the road is bordered by stone walls of an interesting design that I’ve only seen within a few miles of this site – the walls are wide at the base and taper to a quite narrow top with the top course of stone distinctly sloping toward the center of the wall –

The homestead itself is a rather elaborate and interesting spot; there’s a large garden wall which, on the sloping site, created a level area around the house  –

Above the wall we find the cellar hole of the house itself –

With the remains of the stairway that led to the cellar –

Connecting to the house foundation are several low walls that appear to be foundations for portions of the house, or perhaps porches –

Within a few feet is a dug well –

The homestead was a fair distance from a stream and there are no nearby springs so a dug well was the only way to obtain water. A fist-sized rock dropped into the well takes about two seconds to hit bottom meaning the well is approximately 65 feet deep.

Hand digging a well was an extremely hazardous undertaking; between cave-ins and the build-up of toxic gasses many people died while digging a well. John Muir (of Yosemite fame) was 17 years old when his father put him to work hand digging a well. He was down 80 feet when toxic gas, perhaps carbon dioxide from his own breathing, almost killed him before he was rescued.

Not far from the house foundation and its well is the foundation of the barn –

With the foundation of what appears to be a connected square silo –

Since livestock also needs water, the barn had its own dug well –

The prodigious quantities of stone that had to be moved and stacked to build the foundations, line the dug wells and construct the field walls is truly amazing. As is the amount of stone extracted from the fields and piled in stonerows –

Now, 100 years after the farm family moved away the fields have reverted to forest.