How to Read a Wall Like a Document

What the Stone Walls Remember

I just read Robert Thorson’s piece in The Public Historian about the stone walls of New England—and I keep thinking about how those of us in New England walk past them every day without realizing what we’re seeing.

They’re not just scenic boundaries. These walls—over 250,000 miles of them—are the records of early farming, migration, land use, and local labor. They’re geological, ecological, historical, and cultural all at once. But here’s the problem: they aren’t really protected. Not in any consistent or meaningful way.

Thorson makes a compelling case that we need to treat these walls like wetlands: first we map them, then we teach about them, then we protect them. And with new tools like LiDAR, we actually can map them. That opens the door for local history groups, volunteers, and yes—Neighbor Historians—to help.

If you need to map where neighbors lived, mapping out walls is another tool in the kit for understanding the lay of the land. These old boundaries can tell you who farmed where, who lived next to whom, and how communities changed over time.

Some states are already using volunteers to map their walls. The New Hampshire Geological Survey is with their Stone Wall Mapper project. Volunteers use handheld GPS devices to map out where stone walls are, and that data gets added to a shared GIS platform. Staff then follow up to confirm and verify what’s been mapped.

This got me thinking. What if your next research project wasn’t about just people or houses—but a wall? Who built it? Who owned the land? Who crossed it? And what’s growing along it now?

These walls still have stories to tell. Maybe it’s time we started listening.

Picture of a stone wall

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