Boston Globe Letter to the Editor

Response to "Stone Wall Plunderers" Boston Globe August 10, 2009

My love of stone and a career in the industry was handed down from my grandfather to my father and from him to me. Therefore, I applaud NH's efforts to raise the penalty on stone theft and am confident this protects my cherished industry.

Recovering stone for architectural and hardscaping purposes is a traditional activity going back hundreds of years. This weathered stone is now an important source of farm income that protects open farmland from cookie cutter subdivisions, something I consider the ultimate death blow to preservation.

Luckily, this wall stone is no longer wasted by getting "crushed up for gravel to pave muddy dirt roads" and is now economically viable in its own right. In fact, my family's business, our twenty employees, and the farmers we partner with still rely on this beautiful stone for our livelihoods.

Littleton, MA
gerald@stoneyard.com

Fieldstone Theft

By Brian MacQuarrie, Globe Staff  |  August 10, 2009

NORTH HAMPTON, N.H. - New Hampshire is getting tough, enacting strict new penalties. Updating a 1791 law that fined thieves $15 for stealing stones, a bill sponsored by Day that Governor John Lynch signed last week will assess triple damages against thieves, plus attorney’s fees, to restore a picked-apart wall. The considerable expense of rebuilding such walls could make the penalties quickly add up to thousands of dollars.

New England’s six-state landscape is believed to have lost more than half the stone walls that once crisscrossed its farmland and forest-cleared pasture, a web of piled rocks estimated to have totaled 250,000 miles, enough to reach to the moon.

Much of that loss was considered appropriate in the distant past, when the walls were seen less as historical markers than as sources of cheap and easy-to-quarry rock; they were crushed for gravel to pave muddy dirt roads.