Dry Stone Conservancy Map

A Living Inventory of Stone

Across the eastern United States, thousands of dry stone structures stand as quiet evidence of centuries of craft — roadside field walls, arched bridges, cemetery enclosures, and farmstead foundations raised without a drop of mortar, balanced through gravity and a mason's eye alone.

The Dry Stone Conservancy has been documenting this heritage for decades. Their survey captures the location, age, stone type, condition, and restoration history of every structure volunteers and professionals have recorded, submitted through a KoboToolbox-based field survey.

The data is rich. What it needed was a front end that could show it.

What It Does

The map has two primary views:

Wall Finder is a photo gallery paired with a Leaflet map. Filters let you narrow by state, stone type, condition, structure type, and project type (historic, restoration, new build). Each card links to a detail view with the full survey record, partner attribution, and all submitted photos.

Story Map is a five-chapter scrollytelling narrative that moves through the dataset thematically — from a full-range overview, through the limestone-lined lanes of the Kentucky Bluegrass, back to the oldest pre-1800 structures, forward to active restoration projects, and out to the growing survey area beyond Kentucky.

Each chapter filters the map to the relevant wall subset, zooms to the appropriate region, and highlights a featured structure with a pull quote from the submission record.