Why Are There A lot of Stone Walls In And Around The Northeast And How Old Are They?

March 11th, 2010 Posted in Tools and Equipment

Depending on where you live, there are different types of CT fencing used for various reasons. For example, if you live in Arizona, mud based adobe like fencing structures are used more than wooden CT fences. In the Midwest traditional white picket fencing is used quite a bit, and in the southern portion of the US, like Kentucky where there are a lot of horse farms, split rail white fences are the favorite choice. Many of these are simply done by what is preferred in that region or what holds up best to that particular climate. One type of fencing however, has some important history to it and that is a stone wall that can be found all over New England.

Stone walls can be found on most properties in the following New England states: Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire and New York. A lot of these stone walls are tucked back and hiding in wooded areas of various properties and can not be seen by anyone. People that are interested in subjects such as history, science and their actual property soon started to research these various stone walls that could be found in these states in the Northeast.

There are considered to be tens of thousands of segments of stone walls in the world with one of the biggest being in New England. If you were to add up the length of all of the stone walls thought to be in New England it would probably reach all the way to the moon. One educated guess was that it was about 240,000 miles in length. The height of most of these stone walls is above the adult knee but lower than the hip usually measuring a height at about 2 feet so they were not very high. It is very uncommon to see a stone wall that is higher than a couple of feet. Most of these walls were not {actually built|made] to be a kind of fence which is interesting as that is what it appears to be .

Most stone walls are simply rocks that were placed one on top of the other without any type of sand holding it together. It is thought that they were originally formed by farmers that needed to clear the rocks from their land so they could use the land for growing. They would stack the rocks on the {outskirts|edge] of their farm which eventually also acted as a property marker too . Most of these walls were constructed in the early 1600′s with the majority of them being built between the time period of the American Revolution and the Civil War.

The next time you are in New England take a look around the perimeter of a property and you will most likely notice a low stone wall that most likely was built a very long time ago . It is a unique piece of the history of these states which no other kind of fences can claim.