Strange Piles of Rocks in Appalachia

foreign see that yeah that's rich pine the whole stumps from this little and just get off of it as you need to and it'll always be there looks like you done been chopping on it i have that yeah pink it might be nice hmm so this area that we're walking in right now is an old road bed of course nobody's been driving on it and really even in my lifetime so for 50 years or more but you can see when it rains it kind of turns into a river down through here over here you can see as it goes back down through there where all the leaves have been brushed aside that's water so you can tell it's been a had a kind of real gully washer when it does that it washes down this old road bed back down towards the creek i'm always hopeful that we'll find an arrowhead or something where it's been washed but not one today so far day's not over yet though you can see the old road bed continues right here up ahead where they're all standing it's kind of like an intersection this road's meeting another road where so where they're standing you could go left and go on down a road bed that way or go right and go up the mountain the other way i like to think about in days gone by when people did travel this road whether it was you know there was a few cars or if it was by wagon or sled or by walking if they met up you know if you ever run into somebody right there at the intersection just like we do today at a stop sign or something but boy i'd like to sit there and almost sometimes when i'm up here makes me think if i could sit still beside one of these that i might just if i wait patiently you know somehow magically i might be able to see some of those old-timers as they went about their way it's hanging on this lake today that tells you how humid it is that's why i wore shorts yeah but i mean if you of course you can feel it but yeah you can actually see it right there all that water because it's not raining since way sometime up last night everything's still wet you're right about that really humid we probably walked through here well no time how many times but never seen it the lid's still on it the lid comes off it's a little stinky i wonder what was in this this kind of looks like a liquor bottle or something wait a minute it says ball on the bottom cool so no it probably wasn't a liquor bottle i don't know it could still be it doesn't smell like alcohol which i think it would have stopped smelling like alcohol long ago how about that and the lid still that's right so cool wait for it the lid screws on and off and it's whole i had a feeling and i looked down there um it just says like federal law prohibits sale or reuse of this bottle so like you wouldn't go buy this at the store and then resell it much even modern stuff says that on it katie always has feelings and they always they're always right they're always valid i don't know i just had a feeling about it and you see the hole i pulled it out of it's the glass that part was see that hit the sun how about that and it the fact that it's hole is cool but the fact that the lid screws on and off that kills me that's really cool i never know whose that was and what they were doing with it what's interesting though is that says ball like the you know i mean that's the company the mason jail company i mean ball mason's it's got those numbers i wonder if you could look it up you could probably identify it on their website i was just thinking to myself as soon as we crossed this little hill i thought you know what we should have brought our metal detectors a metal detector you know it had to carry it but this might have been a cool place to metal detect there's a huge birch tree matt said we ought to try to tap that one someday how tall you think that is matt it's probably 65 70 feet beautiful [Applause] okay um [Music] daddy you walk right past this [Music] i'd like to spend a little time at some point there's something else up there i can feel it [Applause] so where we're standing in this wooded area you can see back through here how it's kind of flat you can see these piles of rocks i think there's one two three over here there's another one over here on the other side of me so those piles of rocks you think well what are they that's where people this flat area although it's so wooded today it it was at one time it was a cornfield so i can't remember that not in my lifetime but pap could he would tell me stories about it he could remember when this was a field of corn those rocks or rocks that they dug out as they plowed the corn every year and and got the field prepared to plant you're always finding new rocks matt and i find them we've been gardening where we live we've lived there for almost 30 years and we're still throwing rocks out of the garden now our rocks are not as big as some of these they're more of the small kind but here by this creek bed you can see how how big some of these are so where i'm standing directly behind me is a creek is the creek standing creek this way in front of me up a little rise is where there was a road so that was the road bed so just off the road but between the road and the creek is where they had their corn fields back in the day and they would pile these rocks here well in a lot of places and i'm sure this is not just appalachia probably throughout the world even but definitely throughout the united states but i can only speak to appalachia but in a lot of places in appalachia you will see when they the same thing every year as they turned over the ground they dug out more rocks and they would lay them in rows i mean they would build fences out of the rocks they didn't use any kind of mortar or anything like that there's just stacked rocks and they're really beautiful i've seen a lot over in the smoky mountains kind of in the park you can see them they built those they had to do something with the rock so it made sense that they would use those rock walls they used it for boundaries like property boundaries they would use them to keep animals in a place or out of a place you know kind of around their garden over in the smokies and here too where the ground can be so steep a lot of times they use those rock walls to channel water so the runoff of water it would slow it down and over time if it was like on a steep grade you can think about it as the leaves and the dirt got pushed against that rock wall it build up the ground so maybe they had a more flat a little almost like a terrace but nature was doing it you know a place to plant there but i was going to read to you out of the of course out of the dictionary i didn't want to bring the dictionary all the way up here with me because it's too heavy so i printed this out that's what it has to say about it a rock fence is a noun a fence constructed of rocks or stones with no mortar same as a rock wall or stone fence according to the 1983 peterson east tennessee folk speech rocks fence and rock wall were equally common in east tennessee generally and in the smokies so in 1936 it was documented that it was used rock fence was used in swain county and in madison county north carolina in 1956 the great smoky mountain national park they recorded and documented different people's memories and things that they thought about things i've got a little friend here a little butterfly oh how sweet is that that's that's great ain't it i hope you guys can see it i wish i had somebody to hey corey i need you run hurry bring your camera so the butterfly went from my hand to matt's hats that was sweet wasn't it so i go back to in 1956 the great smoky mountain national park they recorded people and documented different things so this was just documented somebody said i used to play out on the old rock fence in 1967 it was documented that a fence made of stone or rock without mortar it was documented in brass town which is good that's where we're at although my people in brasstown didn't build fences they just piled rocks and then in gatlinburg and in maryville tennessee too so in 1973 another great smoky mountain national park documentation says we'd turn off there at uncle alec coles with a big rock fence on one side and a big rock fence on the other and that divided the road you know and divided your property where they'd make the big fences with their rocks where they'd haul from the fields in 1982 maple's memories there are many rock fences still standing throughout the park they marked boundary lines and kept the stock from straying they were started when we plowed and tried to clear the garden every time you would hoe it seems like you would cling down on one of those rocks 1991 haynes haywood haywood home was the name of the book daddy kept an ox car and sled for hauling rock out of the fields we built rock fences with most of the rock because we didn't have anything else to do with them and they had to come out of the fields so that's the documentation of the rock fence i'll be interested to know if you're familiar with rock fences in your area if you if you've seen them or if maybe if your family when they get out rocks out of the fields if they pile them into rock fences but this is just a really special area to me i have such memories of pap telling me he could remember the corn they're not too far from where we're at right now he could remember a stone stable where they kept horses probably the horses that they used to plow the uh the field or mules it may have been mules instead of horses but he could remember those things and as i grew up he would tell me those stories and we would walk in the woods and and i would just be mesmerized by the people who once called this area home some of them were people from my family and some of them were just friends and neighbors so the big tree that i was standing in front of it's a huge oak tree oh my goodness it's huge you could tell by my me standing in front of it so beautiful so tall since oak trees grow so slow i know that oak tree was here maybe in a little small tree but it was here when they were still growing corn in this field i hope you enjoyed this trek up the creek with us and i hope you'll drop back by often as we celebrate appalachia

Channel: Celebrating Appalachia

Views: 51,498

Keywords: rich pine, fat wood, rock fence, rock wall, hand built rock fence, hand built rock wall, no mortar rock wall, historic rock fence, stone walls in woods, stacked rock fence, strange rock walls in Appalachia, Rock fence in Appalachia, Appalachia, Appalachian Mountains, Celebrating Appalachia, Tipper Pressley

Id: WgE4TH42dwI

Length: 15min 5sec (905 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 13 2021