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Who Built Those Stone Walls in the Middle of the Woods?

Building the region's stone walls took an estimated 40 million days of work — a tremendous portion of them by Black and Indigenous laborers who deserve their due.

by Reed Sparling
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Walk through many forests in the mid- and lower Hudson Valley — including those at Scenic Hudson’s Shaupeneak Ridge, Esopus Meadows and Black Creek preserves — and you’ll notice many kinds of stone walls snaking through the trees. 

Who erected these barriers in the middle of the woods? And why? The answers trace back centuries. Often ignored by hikers, and even some history buffs, stone walls are only one of the many kinds of stone structures found in the region. 

Not all stone structures found on agricultural land, past or present, were necessarily built by farmers. While much research is being done to identify their origin, who built them, and when, throughout the Northeast and beyond Indigenous peoples built stone barriers, mounds, monuments, and other structures for other purposes long before colonists arrived.

Stone wall at Franny Reese State Park (Photo: Robert Rodriguez, Jr. / Scenic Hudson)

In fact, in the southeastern U.S. and southeastern Canada there is a high concentration of what is known as Ceremonial Stone Landscapes. Some of these cairns and walls may have been used for ceremonial purposes, to indicate boundaries or the direction of trails, or to commemorate the location of important events.

More recent stone walls were needed by early colonial farmers. The old saying goes that “nothing is certain but death and taxes.” For the average local farmer a few centuries ago, you could add one more certainty: stones.

The Hudson Valley contains a superabundance of them, most dumped here by the last glaciers that moved through the region some 12,000 years ago. (An expert geologist could tell you where the glaciers picked them up.) These farmstead stone walls remain as a testament to the hard work it took to create farms in the valley from the 1600s through the mid-1800s.

Preparing a field that wouldn’t break a plow and would be hospitable to crops usually meant moving large quantities of stones. A wall, essentially a linear landfill, required a shorter carry and took up less space than a single pile; plus, if tall enough, it could keep animals from straying. Still, the size of fields remained relatively small because so many stones were “two-handers” — those requiring both arms to lug.

Stone wall by the Hudson River at Franny Reese State Park (Photo: Robert Rodriguez, Jr. / Scenic Hudson)

Sadly, for the farmers, the lugging wasn’t a one-time affair: It occurred each spring, as the frost heaved up a fresh batch of stones from beneath the soil. “They just kept coming,” says Susan Allport, author of the book Sermons in Stone: The Stone Walls of New England and New York. “People in the Northeast thought that the devil had put them there.” 

Who put them on the walls? On the vast majority of the region’s farms, which were small, it was up to the farmers themselves, their wives and children. On larger farms, enslaved Black people often did the backbreaking work. We know the latter, says Allport, because of a few records, such as the ledger of Westchester’s Ezekiel Hawley. One entry in 1787 notes that he credited 32 shillings to an enslaved man named Robin “for four days carting stone.”

That same year in today’s Armonk, Samuel Lyon had more than a quarter mile of walls built by five men. Since the account doesn’t mention payment, historians suspect people enslaved by Lyon did the work. Meanwhile in Poughkeepsie, an enslaved man named Caesar was praised for being expert at “making a very good stone-wall.”

Written accounts in New England attest that enslaved Indigenous peoples also were forced to erect walls for farmers, sometimes as a way of settling debts. Finally, indentured servants and prisoners also carried out the task of building walls.

Closer view of a stone wall at Franny Reese State Park (Photo: Robert Rodriguez, Jr. / Scenic Hudson)

By 1871, a survey counted 252,539 miles of stone walls in New England and northeastern New York — “enough to circle the earth ten times,” says Allport. University of Connecticut professor Robert Thorson, an expert on New England’s stone walls, has estimated it took 40 million days of manual labor, or over 109,000 years’ worth of work, to build them. 

Since then, the number of historic stone walls has dwindled. They outlived their usefulness in the 20th century as farmers abandoned their fields and livelihoods for less laborious work, and they didn’t meet the needs of subsequent land development. Today, about 120,000 miles of the walls remain in the valley and New England, many located within woods that have grown up around them. Ironically, while these relics garner little notice, the two stone walls created by sculptor Andy Goldsworthy and a team of craftsmen from Scotland and England in 1999 and 2010 are prime attractions at the Storm King Art Center.

Thorson founded an organization, the Stone Wall Initiative, to protect New England’s stone walls. No such group seems to exist in our region. What’s the point of saving them? “Stone walls are…a visceral connection to the past,” Thorson stresses. “They are just as surely a remnant of a former civilization as a ruin in the Amazon rain forest.” Or as Atlas Obscura so poignantly states, stone walls offer “a trace of countless individual acts etched on the landscape.”

That’s something to ponder the next time you come across one. 

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Our mission is to immerse you in the storied history, fresh happenings, and coming solutions for making the Hudson Valley greener and more livable long-term.

Viewfinder is published by Scenic Hudson, the celebrated nonprofit credited with launching the modern grassroots environmental movement in 1963. With over 25,000 passionate supporters, Scenic Hudson’s mission is to sustain and enhance the Hudson Valley’s inspirational beauty and health for generations to come. Viewfinder supports that mission, because the better people understand what makes this place special, the more they will invest in protecting it. 

Keep up with the latest stories by subscribing to Scenic Hudson’s monthly digital newsletter, and connect with us on social via Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Threads.

Lynn Freehill-Maye
Managing Editor
editorial@scenichudson.org 

Riley Johndonnell
Director Creative Strategies & Communications
rjohndonnell@scenichudson.org

Lynn Freehill-Maye
Managing Editor
editorial@scenichudson.org 

Riley Johndonnell
Director Creative Strategies & Communications
rjohndonnell@scenichudson.org

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We’re always looking for ideas around our main topic areas of Climate Solutions, Land + Air + Water, Plants + Animals, History + Culture, Outdoors, and Community.
  • Journalists and writers who have deep familiarity with New York and the Hudson Valley, we’d love to have you contribute! Please do introduce yourself by email, sharing writing samples and any relevant pitches you may have.
  • Photographers and videographers, we’d love to hear from you and see what you do. Please send along a portfolio with images or footage that showcases your best and/or most relevant work, with an emphasis on anything captured outdoors. 
  • Illustrators, we commission artwork on the regular. Drop us a note with some of the beauty you’ve created.
  • Media Partners & Social Media Influencers, we welcome opportunities to team up on series and campaigns. Reach out with any background about yourselves and your ideas.
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  • We also love to partner with other organizations whose missions align with Scenic Hudson’s. Feel free to reach out with some background on your group and its work.
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  • We love to collaborate with media outlets, especially on episodic series (like these) of interest to our shared audiences. Past collaborations have included radio interviews, panel discussions and other events, original artwork, and e-blasts, all furthering the campaign’s excitement and reach. 
  • We also love to partner with other organizations whose missions align with Scenic Hudson’s. Feel free to reach out with some background on your group and its work.
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