Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Rock Piles from Middle TN near the AL line

Reader Nolen writes:

This is a friends farm, and there are tons of these piles. The hillside is not farmable now, may have been a zillion years ago. There are springs nearby or former springs, some have gone dry.
[Note the hollow - PWAX]
This is Middle TN near the AL line.
The Old Stone Fort at Manchester, TN is not very far away:

http://www.tn.gov/environment/parks/brochures/pdf/oldstonefort.pdf

Some of them are near a former farm road, but no idea how old the road is. There was a famer who sold timber up there but these piles seem to pre-date that. They are not piled up like typical rock piles along-side fields- about 20-30' from each other in all directions. Many are most seem to be on the western side of the hill/mountain. Terrain is very rocky- limestone, heavily wooded. Most piles are considerably larger than what I would expect to cover an old grave, and they are not ined up in anyway like I would expect if they were Civil War-related. Today, Laura reports finding a 10m stone circle that she came upon horseback riding. I hope to get pix of that soon.

3 comments :

pwax said...

What lovely woods. These piles remind me a bit of chambered cairns from NY state.

inc123 said...

We tried to map these Friday, my cellphone has not service so I couldn't use my GPS app. I hope to get a real GPS soon- ironically, app kept saying find a clear sky!

Not knowing the offical wat to map, we made the North Line 1-2-3-4
with those East A-B-C, also a-b-c, b1 etc.

The lower ones were apprx 4.5' sq. The large ones are the top about 15' sq and taller. At the top is a vertically stacked on somewhat like a small section of a wall. The terrain takes a dip beyond it, then there ae a few more.

Did not see any quartz, and vertical rocks, or split rocks that seemed human-made. Some of those features do occur naturally in the area.

inc123 said...

Newly found circle is not in same area or connected...darn