Stone Walls Across the Landscape

 Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

                                    Robert Frost, Mending Wall

When European settlers began clearing forests for fields, rocks had to be removed to allow crops to be grown or hay to be cut without dulling the scythe. The rocks were piled along the fences that had been built from the trees that had been cut to clear the fields, thus elongated piles of rocks accumulated.

When the wooden fences decayed, the piles of rock were readily at hand to build stone walls –

Construction of the walls has been described as one of the most heroic and back-breaking construction efforts in history. In 1939, using historical data from the US Department of Agriculture, it was estimated that there were 240,000 miles of stone walls in New England alone – how many more miles could be added from the other northeastern states? By one estimate, the work that went into them would have built the Egyptian pyramids one hundred times over.

The extent of wall building can be seen in this Lidar aerial photo of a small area in northcentral Pennsylvania (Lidar shows ground-level features, “seeing” through the forest canopy) –

There are many different styles of wall, usually depending on the heritage of the builders – Scotch-Irish, German, Italian, eastern European –

As Robert Frost wrote, walls are in constant danger of falling. From growing trees –

Frost heaving –

Utility rights-of-way –

Removal for landscaping –

Or because they're "in the way" of modern farming –

Many of the old walls have disappeared, most of those that remain either border fields that were abandoned years ago and have reverted to forest or are delineating property boundaries.

Eventually, hundreds of years from now, the last of the old walls will be gone: fallen, removed, buried. Meanwhile they’re a window into the past and the haunt of chipmunks, garter snakes and a vast array of other critters.