Monday, October 04, 2010

Dave's Comment & East Bay Walls of CA & a CT Link

Dave from Delaware left a comment to a post called Mt Wachusett bing mapped with some good instructions:
"Bing Maps does have a fantastic Bird's Eye" view of the "East Bay Walls" (aka the "Berkeley Mystery Walls"). These are extensive ancient stone walls identical in construction to Ron's rock lines, that run intermittenly along the mountain ridges that run from Berkeley all the way down to San Jose, just east of the San Francisco Bay waters.

To see them, just punch in "Misson Peak Regional Park" into the Bing Maps search function. Go to aerial maps and magnify. You will see a white building on the top of Mission Peak - it is a transmission tower. Start your search there and many walls and partial walls can easily be seen, some a few yards long, some miles long. For example look east of the tower about 4000 feet for a good example. Then go to Birds Eye and you will be quite pleased with the quality of the view. Astonishing."
I put a red circle around the tower in a screen capture.
And it is indeed astonishing to see the stones amid all those lines of sheep and cattle erosion, once you zero in on them.

Lately I've been referring people to the CT State Library Website and it's online collection of Connecticut Aerial Photos. You'll find that:
"In 1934 Connecticut became the first state to complete a statewide aerial survey. The State Library has several aerial surveys of the entire state, along with some partial surveys, and has put the 1934, 1938 (partial survey), and 1965 (in process) surveys online."

It's astonishing, to me anyway, to see all the stone rows that appear on these photos.
And to see how similar these rows are to the CA rows.
If perhaps you know of and are familiar enough to be able to locate an area of "mysterious stone walls" in Montville or Stonington or anywhere in CT, you might like to try to find the area at: http://cslib.cdmhost.com/custom/aerials.php.
You might be astonished too.

Familiar enough with my own property, I'll use it as an example:

Magnified View:
The big red rectangle is my house (circa 1700), yellow lines are existing features (rows of stone, including the fish weir in the river), and the various yellow shapes are mounds in my old chicken yard and, way to the left, a turtle petroform...

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous6:55 PM

    It's astonishing to me how hard it is to find the walls. Why didn't you put a red circle around the walls or give a better clue to the trail to take.

    ReplyDelete