Why Preserve Stone Walls?

Sept. 2008

On Tuesday, October 28 at 7:00 p.m., Dr. Robert M. Thorson, Professor of Geology at the University of Connecticut and co-founder of the Stone Wall Initiative, will speak at the Historical Society of Cheshire County (HSCC) on, "Why Preserve Stone Walls." The lecture is free and open to the public.

There are approximately 240,000 miles of stone walls in New England, which is longer than the U.S. coastline or even the distance to the moon at perigee. Abandoned stone walls are the signatures of rural New England. Crisscrossing the parks, suburbs, the farms of nearly every village and town, they are the relics of a vanished agricultural civilization that once flourished. Stone walls exist elsewhere, but only in New England do they rise above the level of architectural ornaments to the status of landforms.

Thorson is the winner of the 2003 Connecticut Book Award for Stone by Stone: The Magnificent History of New England's Stone Walls. He is the co-founder of the Stone Wall initiative, which supports the appreciation and preservation of historic walls. He wrote the field guide to New England stone walls, Exploring Stone Walls, and writes a regular column for The Hartford Courant.

This program is co-sponsored by HSCC, the Marlborough Heritage Commission, and the Marlborough Historical Society.