A few years ago I was invited to document an old stone wall on a farm in Kentucky. The property owner assumed it was up to 200 years old, built by an early homesteader. But recently I heard from an expert who thinks it’s much older!
That old stone wall in Kentucky may be older than we thought!
In this video, I explain the new thinking about the old stone wall in Kentucky.
In 2024 I published a video about going to photograph an old dry-built stone wall on the Collins Farm in Kentucky (you can watch that video below). It was a fun and interesting day but the light was so harsh that I was really disappointed with my photographs.
But the thing about YouTube is that you never know who might watch. On the day I visited Kentucky, Joe Collins told me he thought the wall might be 200 years old and we both assumed it was a boundary wall made of stones that had been cleared for farming. Then last month (January 2026) I received a message from a Virginia-based architectural historian who specializes in old stone walls, and his opinion is that it’s an ancient Native American ceremonial wall.
One of the features he saw in the video that made him think that were the holes or gaps like windows in the wall — known as basal niches — that were not a feature of farm walls. From what I’ve read, basal niches could have been considered as spirit portals, or they could have been a place for offerings or burning incense or similar activities.
These ceremonial stone walls are much more common in New England, where they have been dated at up to 4,000 years old! There are also stone cairns and chambers located there — much like the ones I showed in my America’s Stonehenge video.
The fact that this wall is so long and has so many portals and other features makes me wonder if Joe Collins farm — and the very ground we walked over — may have been a significant spiritual location to ancient indigenous people there.
Other videos featuring architectural historian Daniel Pezzoni
The Long Hunter Wall
Native American Ritual Stone Construction Virginia, Part One
The original video from Joe Collins Farm
Watch the video from our initial visit to see the wall on Joe Collins farm in Kentucky.
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