Pro tip: That old stone wall in Vermont might not be a boundary marker

I was hiking near Stowe last month and found this really old stone wall running through the woods. Some folks think it's just a property line from the 1800s, but I noticed the stones were stacked in a way that looked more defensive than practical. Could it be a forgotten fortification from the French and Indian War? What do you all think, was it built to mark territory or to keep something out?

3 comments

3 Comments

morgan_butler1mo ago

Whoa, hold on, you might be onto something. I've seen old stone walls all over New England and never thought about them being anything but property lines. But here's the thing - have you looked into whether it might have been built by Indigenous people way before the French and Indian War? Some tribes in that area were known to stack stones for hunting blinds or defensive positions, and those would look a lot different than a farmer's boundary wall. Might be worth checking with a local archaeologist before you jump to the fortification theory.

lilycraig1mo ago

Morgan, what kind of stone alignment would point to Indigenous use versus colonial boundary marking?

matthew8647d ago

Yeah I gotta admit I barely know my left from right when it comes to stone alignments so take this with a grain of salt but I've messed up enough fence lines on my own property to spot a boundary wall a mile away. A colonial wall is usually real straight and follows property lines like a grid, with stones stacked kind of sloppy and gaps filled with smaller rocks. Indigenous stone work though tends to be more organic, like they used the natural shape of the land and piled rocks in a way that looks almost like a cairn or a low snake shape, not a straight line. I've seen pictures of these hunting blinds up in Vermont that are just a few stones arranged in a circle, nothing like the long walls farmers built to keep cows in. So if you spot a line that curves with a ridge or has a deliberate gap for sight lines, that's probably not a farmer's work. Worst case you'll just look like a goofball asking an archaeologist about your weird rock pile like I did last summer.