(On our app? See video here)
Although he left West Virginia in 1969 for 34 years to serve in the Navy and then pursue a career in the oil and gas business, Mike Miller never forgot the mysterious, moss-covered rock walls he and his friends explored and played around in the woods behind his Knollwood area home, a mile or two north of Charleston city limits.
After returning to West Virginia, Miller said, he was anxious to absorb as much of his state's heritage and history as soon as possible, to make up for lost time in reconnecting with his home state. To help scratch that intellectual itch, he enrolled in Marshall University's Appalachian Archaeology and Time and Place in Appalachia classes, both taught by Dr. Robert Maslowski, a retired archaeologist for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Huntington District, at MU's South Charleston campus. When it came time to do an independent studies research paper, Miller opted to try to identify the source of the walls that had intrigued him in his childhood.
"Growing up in the '50s, we'd heard that the walls had been built by slaves," Miller said.
In more recent years, he learned that the creation of many stone walls and piles of carefully stacked rock known as cairns found in relatively undisturbed sites throughout Appalachia and the East had been attributed by a number of archaeologists and historians to American Indians, possibly for ceremonial purposes.
"I had hopes that they would turn out to be prehistoric," Miller said, during a recent visit to the walls. But after completing his research on the site, he said, he came to another conclusion.
Miller's study of tax, census and property records made the local theory that the walls were constructed by slave labor unlikely, since there was no evidence of slave ownership or large farming operations in that section of Kanawha County. But the research did establish a chain of ownership for the area, first settled by Michael Newhouse in 1783. A still-standing log house associated with the property encompassing the largest of the stone walls - located in a wooded area off Velma Drive - was built in 1856. In 1898, the land was sold to Karl Wiersteiner, who operated a dairy farm on the tract, which remains in family hands today, with Dan and Phyllis Wiersteiner Dean the current owners. After the farming operation closed sometime in the early first half of the 20th century, the tract reverted to woodland.
With assistance from Maslowski, retired Department of Highways archaeologist Roger Wise and Division of Culture and History archaeologists Kristin Scarr and Emily Dale, Miller measured the walls' length and dimensions, examined their content and took soil samples.
The 1,220-foot-long Velma Drive wall, which follows a meandering path from a natural terrace to a rock outcropping near the top of a hill, averages about 4 feet in height. It is built of two parallel stacked stone walls joined by a central fill area of smaller rocks, as is a 172-foot-long wall located off the end of nearby Brynwood Drive.
Miller's research showed that the walls' design matches dry stone wall masonry methods practiced in Ireland, Wales and other parts of Europe, "significantly impeding the hypothesis that the walls are prehistoric," he concluded in his paper. The presence of a hand-dug, rock-lined water well adjacent to the Velma Drive wall added weight to the theory that the wall built during historic times.
While the walls may have been begun with the intention of connecting to future walls to provide livestock enclosures, "they also may have been built just for rock-clearing purposes," Maslowski said.
In a presentation to the West Virginia Archaeological Society in Charleston earlier this month, Maslowski used Miller's research on the Knollwood walls to help make the case that many stone cairns and stone wall segments found across the eastern U.S. were likely the work of 19th and 20th century farmers, rather than American Indians.
"Stone walls, stone cairns and stacked stones on bedrock and boulders are very common in Appalachia," Maslowski said. In the era that preceded feedlots, pastures alone were used to raise cattle to market size. With 100 acres of pasture being enough to produce 25,000 pounds of beef, "it would have been worth the extra effort to make as much pasture space available for grazing as possible," he said.
Many rock cairns found in Appalachia have been stacked atop large boulders or sections of exposed bedrock. While some believe such structures were built by American Indians for spiritual purposes, Maslowski said in many cases, it is more likely the stones were placed atop immovable boulders and bedrock by farmers to maximize grazing acreage on their generally small tracts.
"Most of these pastures have been abandoned for decades," he said. "That's why you find them in what are now wooded areas today."
While written or oral history documentation of stone wall and stone cairn construction by farmers is rare, it is not unheard of. Maslowski said the previous owner of a Lincoln County farm containing numerous stone walls and mounds told him structures were built by an ancestor for field clearing purposes.
Since stone walls and cairns lack the organic elements needed for carbon dating to determine their age, it can't be scientifically proven whether they were built during historic or prehistoric times.
"That's led to a lot of speculation," Maslowski said. "Some people really want them to be prehistoric."
Maslowski said a number of rock structures found in West Virginia are believed to have been created by Native Americans. A series of rock walls on the ridge between lower Loop and Armstrong creeks in Fayette County, now virtually obliterated by surface mining, is believed to have predated European settlement, and a number of stone mounds and stone-lined graves associated with American Indians have been identified at locations across the state.
"Not all stone mounds are historic," he said. "Each needs to be evaluated on its own merits."
"Even if these walls aren't prehistoric," Miller said, "they're old and interesting and have a story to tell."
Reach Rick Steelhammer at rsteelhammer@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-5169, or follow @rsteelhammer on Twitter.