Prospect
Updated: 4/9/24 Prospect is a two mile woods walk with 8 unique stages leading to the final in a heavily forested stone wall filled state park. The listed coordinates take you to the first stage and then along a series of old woods roads and trails south of Prospect Hill. Each of the stages is unique, in plain sight and most are off of but near the trail. None of the hides are in the stone walls: no need to disturb them. Note that the first bit of the trail can be muddy from time to time. The terrain rating is due to the length and some very short tougher sections but, mountain bikers regularly ride much of it. Following the path of least resistance is the best choice, especially going to and from stage 6 where the best approach is from the North. Note the attributes and the hints. The cache, all stages, and the hints have been updated,checked and renewed as needed. Please replace everything exactly as found. Have fun out there.
edexter
Some stone wall history: After completing Downey288's challenging Wompatuck Multi #3, I became interested in the history of the many stone walls which crisscross this park. I couldn't believe the sheer amount of toil that went into constructing and maintaining them. Here's a thumb nail sketch of how they were built: The original settlers cut back the forest for agriculture, grazing, and firewood and then dragged the unused stumps to the sides of the fields forming the original boundaries. The relatively small number of stones they encountered were carried or dragged beside the brush piles. Clearing the land changed the micro climate of the soil and without the forest cover, the ground froze sooner, longer and deeper and over the course of generations the process of freezing and thawing "lifted" the stones, which were there as a result of glacial transport, up through the soil at the same time the soil compacted, eroded and sank.
The farmers then began to have a seasonal "crop of stones" which they carried to the sides of the fields and tossed on top of each other forming low stone walls. Over generations, but mostly between 1825-1875, the walls grew wider and higher, though on average no more than three feet tall, and the earlier wood piles rotted away leaving only the stones. The walls were often surmounted with wood fencing when used to enclose animals. The wooden fences have also rotted away. The height, width, and degree of construction varied based on the purpose of the wall (animal enclosure, woodlot boundary, field separation) with most of the walls being simply constructed by tossing stones on each other: the tall well built stone chinked walls with cap stones were largely restricted to the more visible and decorative areas of the farm (front gate, garden, roadside corners). The walls which enclosed cultivated fields were generally three acres or less and more or less square, this being the "right size" compromise between the larger easier to plow fields (fewer turns means quicker plowing) and the time and strength required to carry the stone and dump it at the edge of the field (longer carries take more time).
The smaller stones were carried by hand but the larger ones were generally piled on a wooden sled and dragged to the sides by oxen. While the total amount of labor required to construct the walls seems incredible, the actual process was much more manageable. The walls running through the forest were built not all at once, but slowly, year by year and mostly no more than a few days at a time in the early spring and late fall by everyone on the farm. Families were large back then and many hands moved the stones to form the walls we see in the forest today.