Why Are There Random Stone Walls In Massachusetts Forests?

If you've hiked enough through the thick woods of Massachusetts, you've most likely come across a long stone wall covered in moss, right in the middle of nowhere. These walls aren't random - they're leftovers from when people farmed the land hundreds of years ago.

Who would build a stone wall in the middle of the woods? It wasn't woods.

Much of New England, including Massachusetts, was once cleared farmland, not always forest. When European settlers arrived in the 1600s, the area was mostly wooded, but Native Americans had already cleared some spots for crops.

The colonists chopped down trees to make room for farms, pastures, and homes. By the 1700s and early 1800s, about 70-80% of the land was open fields, not trees. It looked more like rolling hills of crops and grazing animals than the dense forests we see today. I was in awe when my father-in-law was explaining this to me.

When were the stone walls built?

These stone walls were built mostly between the 1700s and the mid-1800s. Farmers made them for practical reasons. The soil in Massachusetts is full of rocks left by melting glaciers from the Ice Age, about 15,000 years ago.

Every winter, freezing and thawing pushed more stones to the surface, making it hard to plow. Farmers picked up these rocks and stacked them into walls to clear their fields. The walls also marked property boundaries and kept livestock, like sheep and cows, from wandering off. Building with stone was smart - it was free, strong, and lasted longer than wood fences that rotted in the wet weather.

Why the forests returned!

In the 1800s, sheep farming boomed, so more walls went up. But by the 1850s, things changed. Better farmland opened in the Midwest, factories offered city jobs, and soil wore out from overuse. People abandoned farms during westward moves and the Civil War. Nature took over: seeds sprouted, trees grew, and forests returned in 100-150 years.

Today, these walls hide in places like state parks, reminding us of busy farms that vanished under the leaves! Fascinating!