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View Full Version : Question regarding rock walls in the NY section



BirchBark
07-26-2006, 20:27
Hi all:

Surely someone here must know the history of the seemingly countless rock walls scattered throughout woodlands of the New York trail section. My first guess would be old property boundaries, but man that's a lot of rock to move with all of that wood around. Perhaps the lands were once mainly pastoral and have since overgrown?

Frolicking Dinosaurs
07-26-2006, 20:36
From Publishers Weekly
"To know New England well, one must know its stone walls," writes the author of this authoritative paean to the structures he calls the "signatures of rural New England." There were once approximately 240,000 miles of stone walls in New England, and Thorson, a professor of geology and geophysics at the University of Connecticut, combines natural history and human history as he tells the story of the walls and how they were built. ... {the stones were} brought to the surface after the New England pioneers cut down the trees and exposed the soil to frost heave, and tossed to the sides of their fields by early farmers clearing the land.... As agriculture declined in the region, the walls were neglected, and today they are "almost as sad as they are simple," he says, for they are evidence of a lost Yankee culture. Now most of the walls have been abandoned, and their stones have become a cash crop to be sold and often carried far away from their original locations ....
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

BirchBark
07-26-2006, 20:58
wow, thanks for that... very interesting.

Amigi'sLastStand
07-26-2006, 21:09
Good find Dino. Very interesting.

gsingjane
07-27-2006, 06:54
As you pass through the area, try and imagine what it must have been like to be plowing and tending those fields with only horses to help you. I look at the slant of some of those areas, how remote they are and how unpromising they must have seemed for agriculture... not a huge surprise that people headed West eventually!

Another interesting point about the history and landscape of the CT part of the trail is that, had you been passing through the area 100 years ago, you probably wouldn't have seen a single tree. First, the land was cleared for farming, but also the trees were cut for manufacture (furniture and ships especially) and then every single remaining tree was turned into charcoal.

Jane in CT

Toolshed
07-27-2006, 11:18
One of the things I love to marvel about. The fields were cleared and the resulting stones (mostly all beautifully polished/cobbled glaciated rocks) are piled into beautiful fences - Back home in Western NY, many houses and buildings were built out of cobblestone. I like to stop from time to time and think about those folks 100-150 years ago Especially when I come across old cellar holes- amazing how small those houses were then. I daydream maybe about children out playing, but likely working the fields in the long summer days - The evening bell ringing loud and clear from the house to call them in for supper.

- Long before WWII or WWI
- before airplanes,
- before the automobile,
- before washers and dryers,
- before modern medicine,
- before air conditioning
I think of everything that has happened between then and now and how those Americans lived their whole lives, from birth to death, never, ever imagining how much life would have changed after their deaths. I then think back to us and wonder what can we never imagine that will happen 50 years after we pass on.

Sorry for the melancholy, sobering thoughts.....

LIhikers
07-28-2006, 08:50
Hi all:

Surely someone here must know the history of the seemingly countless rock walls scattered throughout woodlands of the New York trail section. My first guess would be old property boundaries, but man that's a lot of rock to move with all of that wood around. Perhaps the lands were once mainly pastoral and have since overgrown?

If you are talking about the part of the trail that I think you are talking about, there used to be a small community there. Is it a section of trail that parallels a small stream on one side and a road on the other? There was a mill on the stream and a small town grew up around the mill. The stone walls were property bounderies. I think the NY guide book talks about it a little.

And like Jane said about CT, much of this area of NYwas treeless. The trees had been cut down to make charcoal, used to smelt iron ore. There are quite a few old mines that can be found in NY's Harriman State Park. In fact, there are area of the park where a compass is useless because of all the iron ore in the ground.

Hope that answers your question.