Exploring Stone Walls
A Field Guide to New England’s Stone Walls
I published this book in 2005 at the request of my publisher, George Gibson at Walker & Co. after watching the sales of Stone by Stone, paid me an advance to buy a new laptop and camera in 2003.
Cover Text
“Every stone wall is unique and every stone tells a story,” says Robert M. Thorson, the author of the first field guide to historic New England stone walls– one that helps you identify and appreciate those in your yard, neighborhood, and throughout 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.
A Publishing First
This was the first field guide to New England’s stone walls. As such it sold well in nature centers and bookstores within the region through several printings. Alas, Bloomsbury, which purchased the book’s publisher (Walker) in 2009, let this book go out of print. Fortunately, it’s still easily available online as used copies. As author, I take great pride that this first field guide to New England stone walls has since been incorporated by others in alternative versions (the sincerest form of flattery). Many correspondents have remarked that ESW rides around in their cars and pickup trucks as they travel the backroads of New England, if only because wall-watching beats bird-watching when there are no birds around. There’s even a life list at the end of the book.
Reviews
Field guides tend not to get reviews. However, Chuck Wooster wrote a nice one for Northern Woodlands Magazine: “Thorson does a wonderful job convincing the reader that each stone means something, and that stone walls have always been too difficult and expensive to have been constructed by chance or accident. …Thorson hits his stride in sections two and three, where he examines and classifies the various type of walls and then describes why different types of walls are unique to different parts of New England. Finally, the appendix includes a classification key, where, as in any good field guide, you can fit your specimen into the overall taxonomy…. I sure wish I’d had Exploring Stone Walls with me back in November, while I was waiting under the hemlock tree for that elusive buck. I could have figured out if that old wall was a single or a double, stacked or laid, and who might have built it and why.”
In lieu of published reviews, I offer this link to Goodreads, which gives it a rating of 3.85 out of 4.00.
Listen to the Opening
Listen to the opening paragraphs of Exploring Stone Walls
Ten Walls
For a peek at what’s inside the book, but in color rather than black & white, link to Ten Walls.
Stone Wall Science
This was my first attempt to treat the phenomenon of stone walls as a science. The expanded outline called Stone Wall Science. reveals the textbook-like organization of the book. Since then I’ve published several technical articles, most significantly a peer-reviewed min-monograph in the journal Historical Archaeology titled Taxonomy and Nomenclature for the Stone Domain in New England. An update on that is included under Resources at the Stone Wall Initiative. Link to Manual for the Inventory and Description of Stone Walls.
Link to more on the Stone Wall Initiative.