Robert Thorson, a landscape geologist and professor at the University of Connecticut, estimates that there are more than 100,000 miles of old, disused stone walls out there, or enough to circle the globe four times. Stone walls originated in the early 1800s through the mid-1900s. As more farmers began to settle in New England, the forests were destroyed and turned into large open fields. The glaciers that receded at the end of the last Ice Age left behind millions of stones on this land. Every autumn stones were cleared from the fields, only for there to be more stones the following spring due to the freezing and thawing of the surface. As a result, farmers began to surround their farms, as well as divide different parts of their own property, with thigh-high walls built out of large stones varying in shapes in sizes. These stones are sometimes referred to as “two-handers” because they required two hands to pick up.