Land Use

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Land-Use History

In 1761 New England saw a massive influx of British colonists. The French and Indian war had just come to an end and it was much safer for the area to be colonized. In that first year the Connecticut River valley saw 78 new towns developed. This number grew very fast over the next couple decades. One of the reasons was that we had acquired a large land mass from France in what is known as the Treaty of Paris (see fig 1). By 1810 Vermont alone had 217,000 people. Luckily the first colonizers were able to reap the rewards from the Native Americans hard work. In the past the Native Americans had cleared a lot of the coastal land into wide stretching fields. This allowed the colonists to save time and money by building on them. Once these fields filled up the remaining colonists took to clearing the forest to prepare their homes. They were able to clear about three acres a summer by axe and than used the wood to build houses and fences. The preferred method was to cut the trees late in the summer to prevent stump sprouting followed by an early spring burn to seal the deal. While this was done mainly to have farmable land the burn also provided potash which could be sold for profit, close to two tons of potash was delivered per acre. In the beginning the early settlers were only able to produce enough to keep themselves fed. Their day was of constant work always with something else to do. Luckily for the settlers a high quality wool producing sheep (see fig 2) became available for export from Portugal after they lost their war with napoleon in 1809. The merino quickly became a way for Americans to earn some money. It was a quick and short lived phase that some called fanaticism. In 1810 four thousand sheep were brought to Vermont by 1836 that number was 1.1 million, other states had similar gains. With all this sheep our land was bound to change and in 1840 seventy five percent of northern New England's land was now cleared for sheep raising. The other major change to our landscape was also the introduction of stone walls (see fig 3) to keep the sheep contained. This shift from a wood fence to stone wall occurred from a decline in wood from the cleared land and a influx in stone taken out of the ground for flatter pasteurizing lands. Although great effort was made in building these farms they where soon abandoned and later grown over with new growth forest .

One of our most awesome species of trees we had during our early days as settlers also became a catalyst for the revolutionary war was the eastern whit pine (see fig4) which reached heights of up to 240 feet tall. This tree was highly sought after for its wood working ability which comprised of a very light yet extremely strong lumber. It was used for a number of things such as houses, bridges and other structures but the one place it truly shined was for ship building material particularly the mast. At the time eastern white pine could build the largest and lightest masts. This fact alone was enough for King George the First of England to put a claim on all of the largest trees by having his royal surveyors mark the tree with what is known as the "kings broad arrows" (see Fig 5). Unfortunately for the king one of our American values emerged, rebellion. No self respecting colonists who sailed across the sea to get away from ridiculous laws was going to be told what trees he could and couldn't cut in his own back yard, so the kings self proclaimed trees were cut down and his mark was moved to another tree the colonists saw more befitting for the king. The image of the white pine was than placed on a flag and carried into battle at Bunker Hill (see fig 6).

Currently here in Northern New England we remain one of the most heavily