The life cycle of New Hampshire's forrets were briefly interrupted by stone walls.
There’s no denying that our woodlands are laced with stonewalls. It’s often surprising to newcomers to discover that these rugged icons were here well before the current crop of trees. In fact, most of our thousands of miles of stonewalls were built in the mid-1800s within a surprisingly short period of time.
The first European settlers built the fences they needed to contain their livestock out of wood — after all, there were plenty of trees. That’s what they were doing: clearing forests to create farms and pastures. And interestingly, none of the accounts left behind by those industrious New Hampshire residents mention much about stones or rocks at all.
Then, in the early 19th century, New Hampshire got swept up in “sheep fever.” It was the “dot.com bubble” of its time. By 1840, sheep easily outnumbered people. Wool was in big demand and the more sheep you had the better. Of course, then you needed fences to contain your flock.
Except, by then, wood was in very short supply. Nearly every accessible tree had already been cut down. That’s just about when the rocks — once imprisoned by the heavy forest cover — began to appear. So being practical Yankees, the farmers used them to build their pasture walls.
Then the bubble burst. Too many sheep over-grazed the land. And, without any ground cover — the once rich soil washed away. Cursed with now rock-strewn and exhausted soils and with better opportunities out west, farmers abandoned the state in droves, and trees eventually reclaimed the landscape.
The stone walls still stand, of course. But now, they’re almost obscured by the forests that they once replaced — a natural history lesson turned upside down.
