Two hundred years ago VT was 80% cleared and 20% forested. Now it's about opposite 80/20 forested/cleared.

VT was mostly sheep farms vs dairy at that time. Cows and goats will easily go over stone walls, sheep won't.

My father had my brother and I start building one at the back of our property when we were kids.we did not do a lot. Decades later, in his retirement, he started working on it and made tremendous progress. After he died suddenly the wall sat, a reminder he was no longer here. So now, every time I visit, I go out and find more stones for the wall. Progress is slow but moves ever forward.

This must be for the flatlanders then eh? Never went picking stones like a bunch of degens.

Sheep farming. VT used to be almost entirely clean cut of forests. They regrew. That’s why the rock walls are always in the woods. Boom, your story is done. You’re welcome

It would be great if you could get Tom Wessels to speak to the topic. The NHPR podcast Something Wild briefly addressed the topic a few years ago, and quoted him then https://www.nhpr.org/something-wild/2015-01-02/something-wild-stonewalls-as-landscape

https://www.antioch.edu/faculty/thomas-wessels/

Not really unusual locations if you look at historical pictures...trees? What trees

Sheep farming. Almost all of New England was clear cut for Merino wool.

From Wikipedia:

Merino sheep were introduced to Vermont in 1812. This ultimately resulted in a boom-bust cycle for wool, which reached a price of 57 cents/pound in 1835. By 1837, 1,000,000 sheep were in the state. The price of wool dropped to 25 cents/pound in the late 1840s. The state could not withstand more efficient competition from the other states, and sheep-raising in Vermont collapsed.[39] Many sheep farmers from Vermont migrated with their flocks to other parts of the United States.

To everyone saying that the walls keep sheep in, I can tell you from first hand experience that this is simply not the case. Sheep will stay within the boundaries of cleared land, simply because their food source, grass/pasture, is a product of that cleared land. Farmers did not give a rats ass where their sheep went to pasture, as they did not even keep them in barns (sheep can sleep out in the snow all winter long). The early barns you see were built to store either hay or wheat, the latter of which was grown on cultivated land. And, jf you've ever had to plow land in Vermont and try to plant grain, you will soon realize how much area is lost to rocks if you do not make a concerted effort to remove them, dragging them along with your plow until you reach the boundary of your field (where you pile them up to get them out of the way). If you pay close attention you will find that land that was too steep to plow will not have stone walls, although it was most certainly cleared and used for sheep.

Walls were made to keep sheep in. Yes. It was also a practical issue for farmers where you plow your land and uncover boulders everywhere. You need to move them out of your fields so you can plant, this naturally forms a perimeter of rocks. If you’ve ever tried developing a piece of property you are potato picking rocks for a while. You do pass some old farms that just have big rock piles in the middle of a field. Same idea.

Check the state LIDAR map to find stonewalls and cellar holes where you might not have.

There are two types of stone walls. One that is mostly a heap of stone is created by clearing fields for plowing or mowing; these are typically not very high and mostly rounded at the top. The other type is for livestock and is made much more deliberately, typically higher and often with an obvious top.

I've read a little about this in histories of my town, Bristol in Addison Co. There's a hill east of town that is now forested, but used to be cleared a long way up the slope. After they'd logged the original hardwoods, they got lucky with a second growth of white pine, which was logged in the latter 1800's. After that, it was used for sheep farming: there was a boom in merino-type wools in the late 19th century, and everyone was raising sheep. The soil is very rocky because it's glacial till, so there were many accounts of farmers clearing fields (creating the stone border walls) only to find the stones had re-emerged in their field the next year. Many of these pastures were abandoned, as ours was, and has returned to mixed forest - white pine, maple, birch, beech. I would not have given up so easily! Couplemore seasons you'd have high walls and clear fields.

Huh. So none are Native American effigies? All just borders and sheep stoppers?

I think the best collection of stone walls is out at little river state park in the former ricker basin farming community, there’s old orchards and stuff out there too and it’s fun because the history is really well documented so you can read about who built the walls you’re standing by.

Brave Little State is pretty hit or miss. Sometimes their episodes are great and sometimes they’re really rambly, don’t really get to the point, or are over produced. They get stuck on a lot of the same topics and themes which can get repetitive. Let’s hope this one is good.

Well obviously you've gotta cover the related NH LiDAR project for mapping stone walls.

That is a question that could have been answered with about 5 minutes of research.

Brave little state at it again with those important questions that make a difference to real people.

Stone walls served absolutely no purpose other than a dumping ground for excess stones turned up during plowing.

This is why the other 48 States think you guys are a tiny joke