A Guide To New England Stone Structures

A Guide to New England Stone Structures is a basic field guide to identifying the many different types of stone structures found while hiking through the forest and conservation lands in New England.

This handbook is the first comprehensive field guide to both agricultural and Native American stone structures found throughout northeastern United States. These stone structures include stone cairns, chambers, standing stones, niches, enclosures, stone walls, foundations, wells, pedestal boulders, Manitou stones, and other structures. The handbook provides the means to identify, document, analyze, and interpret these structures.

The only field guide to stone walls in the Northeast. Exploring Stone Walls is like being in Thorson's geology classroom, as he presents the many clues that allow you to determine any wall's history, age, and purpose. Thorson highlights forty-five places to see interesting and noteworthy walls, many of which are in public parks and preserves, from Acadia National Park in Maine to the South Fork of Long Island. Visit the tallest stone wall (Cliff Walk in Newport, Rhode Island), the most famous (Robert Frost's mending wall in Derry, New Hampshire), and many more. This field guide will broaden your horizons and deepen your appreciation of New England's rural history.

For this stunning new volume, photographer William Hubbell has turned his lens toward New England's ubiquitous stone walls. Beginning with the basic geology of the region and why New England has so many darned rocks, he presents a chronological overview of the varying styles and methods of wall building, and includes conversations with six contemporary wall builders. The result is a surprising and refreshing look at stone walls and at the history of New England.

The Art of Splitting Stone is a detailed study of the history, tools, and methods used to split, hoist, and transport quarried stone in pre-industrial New England (1630-1825). It is an invaluable resource for historians, archaeologists, and stone masons interested in identifying and dating early stone splitting and quarrying methods. The amateur researcher and avid outdoors person will find the book useful as a field guide to identifying split boulders and stone quarries abandoned in the woods.

There once may have been 250,000 miles of stone walls in America's Northeast, stretching farther than the distance to the moon. They took three billion man-hours to build. And even though most are crumbling today, they contain a magnificent scientific and cultural story-about the geothermal forces that formed their stones, the tectonic movements that brought them to the surface, the glacial tide that broke them apart, the earth that held them for so long, and about the humans who built them. Stone walls layer time like Russian dolls, their smallest elements reflecting the longest spans, and Thorson urges us to study them, for each stone has its own story. Linking geological history to the early American experience, Stone by Stone presents a fascinating picture of the land the Pilgrims settled, allowing us to see and understand it with new eyes.

William Faulkner once said, "The past is never dead. It's not even past." Nowhere can you see the truth behind his comment more plainly than in rural New England, especially Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and western Massachusetts. Everywhere we go in rural New England, the past surrounds us. In the woods and fields and along country roads, the traces are everywhere if we know what to look for and how to interpret what we see. A patch of neglected daylilies marks a long-abandoned homestead. A grown-over cellar hole with nearby stumps and remnants of stone wall and orchard shows us where a farm has been reclaimed by forest. And a piece of a stone dam and wooden sluice mark the site of a long-gone mill. Although slumping back into the landscape, these features speak to us if we can hear them and they can guide us to ancestral homesteads and famous sites. Lavishly illustrated with drawings and color photos. Provides the keys to interpret human artifacts in fields, woods, and roadsides and to reconstruct the past from surviving clues. Perfect to carry in a backpack or glove box. A unique and valuable resource for road trips, genealogical research, naturalists, and historians.

A practical guide to simple stone building projects for your yard Nothing matches the look and feel of stone structures in and around your home. Yet most people are intimidated by the very thought of masonry, despite the obvious rewards. In Stone Building, Kevin Gardner distills his decades of experience building and maintaining iconic New England–style stone walls into this concise, informative guide. Gardner offers step-by-step instructions for building everything from flagstone walkways to classic patios and ornate fire pits. He also offers time-tested tips to help care for your stone, as well as repair and restoration advice for existing structures.