Boundary stone quest: An adventure on the Harwich/Brewster border
When Bill Collins, longtime friend of Harwich Conservation Trust (HCT), asked if we wanted to see a cool boundary stone in the woods, we jumped at the chance.
A Harwich/Brewster boundary stone in the Punkhorn Parklands.
That’s how we ended up diving into the mysterious Punkhorn Parklands, along the Harwich/Brewster town line, seeking a rocky chunk of semi-ancient history.
Bill lives along the southern edge of the Punkhorn, which borders his backyard. At about 900 acres, the parklands are a natural wonder in the Town of Brewster, and so large “that you can get lost,” he said. That almost seems like a luxury on our thin peninsula.
Luckily, Bill knew where he was going, and after a bit of bushwhacking on a tiny trail, we ended up on a splendid dirt road. The early fall sun danced through the oaks and pines, and all we could hear was birdsong and the rustle of leaves in the breeze.
Living on the Punkhorn has been a constant source of joy for Bill, who moved to the Cape with his late wife in 1998. “This is why we bought our house and stayed here,” said Bill. “It’s all public land, and sometimes I wonder if people really know about this place.”
‘It became our friend’
About 20 years ago, Bill and his wife encountered the boundary stone on one of their many hikes. “We kept going past this thing, and it became our friend,” he said.
On cue, the stone appeared by the side of the road. It looked to be about three feet tall, adorned with a carved “H” and “B,” separated by a line.
Bill Collins, a frequent hiker in the Punkhorn Parklands, considers this boundary stone an old friend.
Slipping into our roles as amateur archaeologists, Bill and I tried to figure out the provenance of the stone. We knew that Brewster was once a part of Harwich, and there had been a rather bumpy breakup in the early 1800s. So, it seemed pretty likely that the boundary stone had to date from after the winter of 1803, when the towns officially separated.
Beyond that, our very limited expertise was exhausted. We needed a surveyor to set things straight, but where the heck could you find one of those property-defining wizards?
In what might be one of the most serendipitous occurrences in HCT annals, a man with a dog approached us along the road. Amazingly, it turned out to be Chet Lay, legendary Cape Cod surveyor, with more than 50 years of experience!
A surveyor sets us straight
Chet said the stone was “definitely from the 1800s,” but then dropped this bombshell: “I don’t think that’s on the town line anymore,” he said. “A lot of these old stone bounds that were set by the Selectmen in 1803, some of them are 60 feet off the town line.”
The imprecision might have been due to the difficulty of surveying back in the days before technology made things easier. “They just got a compass bearing and off they went,” said Chet. “They’d blaze (mark) the trees as they moved along. They’d have rodmen with axes blazing the trees.”
Legendary Cape Cod surveyor Chet Lay and his dog Tobey arrived in the nick of time to provide answers about the boundary stone.
According to Chet, new technology, including the Global Positioning System (GPS), revolutionized the surveying game during his career. “We do in one day what would take us two weeks in the old days,” he said.
We learned that the boundary stone was made of granite, likely quarried in Brewster. “They probably had to pull it out here by mule or something like that,” said Lay. “They’re very heavy.”
And Chet touched on the archaic practice of “perambulation,” where Select Board members around the Cape would walk the perimeters of their towns on a regular basis. “It was an annual thing,” said Chet. “You’ll see a record in the Selectmen’s notes every year about the perambulation they did with the abutting town. It’s still on the books in a lot of towns. They just don’t do it anymore. With GPS now, it’s just not necessary.”
Chet and Tobey (the dog) headed down the road. We were dazzled — it was like we pressed an Information Button on a tree and Chet materialized out of thin air! Filled with knowledge and good cheer, we decided to take a longer loop and spend more time in the glorious Punkhorn.
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