Why are there stone walls in the New Hampshire woods?
Hike in the New Hampshire woods and you may find an old stone wall running between the trees. Why would a wall stand in the middle of a forest? Who built these walls, and what were they for?
Many of these old walls are older than the woods around them: they come from farms. New Hampshire PBS’s NatureWorks tells the story in order. “Before European settlers arrived, nearly all of New Hampshire was covered in thick forests filled with trees like maple, pine, and oak.” Then “In the 1700s and 1800s, settlers began clearing large areas of land to build farms, towns, and roads.” It was hard farming: “the land was hilly and rocky, and the soil was often poor.” “In the mid 1800s, farms across New Hampshire were being abandoned for the promise of better land and more opportunities in the West and in the South.” And then the trees came back on their own: “As the land was left alone, trees began to grow back naturally. This process is called reforestation.” The farm walls stayed where the farmers left them — which is why, NatureWorks says, “it is not unusual to see old stone walls from those early farms when hiking in the woods in New Hampshire today.”
Basis: New Hampshire PBS, NatureWorks, “New Hampshire Forests”. Quotations unchanged.
A wall can tell you what the land around it was used for. Writing for the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests, a conservation easement steward who spends a lot of time in those woods gives the clues. “Small rocks most likely indicate that the adjacent land was used for cultivating crops, because in order to till the soil, rocks were removed and placed in the surrounding rock walls.” “Walls made only of larger rocks were most likely used for animals or to mark boundaries.” “If you see barbed wire nearby, sometimes grown into a tree, this is a sign the wall was used to enclose pastureland for animals.” And one more clue is a tree: “Back when the land was clear, a couple trees along the fence or in the pasture would provide shade for the animals. Fast forward a century or so, and these trees can sometimes be found in the middle of a much younger forest.” Notice the words most likely — these are clues, not proof.
Basis: Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests (Forest Society), blog post “Reminders of the Past” (Emily Landry). Quotations unchanged.
The farmwoods quiz shows that New Hampshire’s farms today have the biggest share of woods of any state. Is that the same story as the walls? The sources here are about forests that grew back on farms people left, not about the woods on farms that are still running, so this is a guess, not a finding. Maybe some of today’s farm woodlots are old fields that grew back and stayed with the farm. Maybe farmers keep woods on purpose — for timber or firewood, or for maple trees tapped for syrup, which USDA counts as woodland. Or maybe it is mostly that New Hampshire has so little farmland in fields to begin with. We have not found a source that says which, so the question stays open.
※ A hypothesis is an idea that isn't proven yet.
📊 Sources for the rankings mentioned in this note (links to the original data and retrieval dates) are on each quiz page below.