Whipple Hill Lexington, MA - part 1

The Whipple Hill Conservation Land in Lexington is interesting for a number of reasons. One reason is the huge rock pile there, which I managed to miss each time I was there previously. Another is the distribution of this sort of large pile - I have only seen ones like this in Lexington and Weston, along Hobbs Brook and the upper reaches of the Charles River. Yet another reason is that Whipple Hill is really surrounded by city or at least densely populated suburbia - making the rock piles here the ones closest to downtown Boston that I have found. So let's discuss some of these topics.

I usually enter the conservation land from the north, near the hilltop. It is a lovely place for a picnic with some bare rock and some views in all directons, except where blocked by a few trees. If you go up there, it is typical Massacusetts hilltop, with signs that everybody since whenever has been there and mucked around. Also there are a few faint traces of rock piles up there and if you head down the path you see a few more possible piles but nothing too exciting. As it turns out, there is much more conservation land downhill than I realized and there is a pond called "Little Pond". Tim Fohl was the first person to mention to me that there was a large rock pile by the pond. He also mentioned scooped out hollows in the pile as examples of deliberate prayer seats built into a pile. Here is a view of the top of the pile.
We have been disagreeing about that for quite a while. I believe it is more likely the hollows (which are very common in large rock piles) are from more recent people digging for buried treasure - it is vandalism not architecture. I don't know how to resolve this issue except, for now, to think that either is a possibility.

Anyway, this large pile is a spectacular large pile, perhaps 15 or more feet tall. It is composed of somewhat small rocks, mostly of the same general size, 6-8 inches across. Most are broken ledge rock and not glacial cobbles. The pile itself, sits next to a brook which feeds the pond about 30 yards away and it is on the eastern side of the pond - looking west over the water. The pond, if you examine it, is seen to be artificial. It is dammed at the southern end and water flows out of it to the north and also (a bit) to the south.

Now, I was walking with my father and asked: why here? He thought about it and concluded that the only plowable land nearby was adjacent to and behind this pile - so that is why it was there - the field was cleared to there. Usually I would argue that ledge rock and not glacial cobble precludes a pile from being a field clearing pile. But in this rocky area there is lots of broken up ledge rock mixed in with the dirt and my father could be right. Of course I don't think so, and my main reason is - look at the size of this thing. Thinking about the logistics of piling up more rocks on top, it would seem like a lot of unecessary work to build it so high. Luckily we do not have to make a decision about this. All piles are of interest and their particular nature is there to explore.

What had not been mentioned previously is that there are a number (I saw two) of other piles here with rocks tossed or placed on exposed outcrops.So these can be taken into further account in the discussion of why the piles are where they are and whether they are from field clearing or not.

The only other piles like this (relatively huge, made from small rocks, built up high) that I have seen, have been in the Lexington-Weston corridor, following Hobbs Brook which is a tributariey of the Charles River and which fills the "Cambridge Reservoir" system you see as you drive south on Rt 128/95, from about Rt 2. Bruce McAleer first showed me pile like this. It was overlooking one of the reservoirs in Weston:
The retaining wall you see in the second picture may be significant. I saw no retaining wall for the big pile at Whipple Hill. But nonetheless the piles are more similar than different and it is tempting to view them as a product of the same culture. By the way, this Weston pile is at the top of a ridge, not near any field. Its consituent cobbles are rounded and clearly come from Stoney Brook (another name for Hobbs Brook but further downstream), a bit of a walk down the ridge. So it strikes me as even less likely to be a field clearing pile. Anyway, I wonder about this watershed. The Charles is connected to the ocean in a way that the other watersheds I explore (the Assabet and the Nashua) are not. This opens up the possibility of a different culture, operating in a different travel corridor. To me, this is intriguing and makes me wish to explore other tributaries of the Charles and see if the pattern recurs in other place. We'll wait and see.

I had gone out out on Monday, Memorial Day, for a walk with my Dad which I expected to be a vacation from rock piles. But he wanted to go to Whipple Hill, so it was a great chance to follow up on what Tim Fohl had said and, as it turned out, there were other rock piles and even another site there.