Nature Bulletin No. 240-A    October 15, 1966
Forest Preserve District of Cook County
Seymour Simon, President
Roland F. Eisenbeis, Supt. of Conservation

****:OLD RAIL FENCES

Between a hundred and a hundred fifty years ago, the early settlers 
came to the Middle West and began to chop out clearings in its vast and 
somber forests. To clear the trees and brush from a few acres of land 
and plant the first crops, among the stumps, required much hard labor. 
But wood was very necessary to these pioneers -- half-hunters, half-
farmers. It furnished logs for their log cabins and barns; fuel for their 
fireplaces; material for furniture, implements and primitive tools. Logs 
were split into rails for building corn cribs, hog pens, sheds and, most 
important, for fencing their fields.

Until the turn of the century these rail fences or "worm" fences were a 
characteristic and picturesque feature of rural landscapes throughout the 
region of our original hardwood forests. Most of them have now been 
replaced by wire fences, but a few remnants may still be seen here and 
there. They were called "worm" or "snake" fences because the rails 
were criss-crossed in a zigzag fashion. Very few new rails are made any 
more because they can only be split successfully from large, straight, 
solid logs without knots, such as the oaks and walnuts that grew in 
virgin timber.

The log was cut four "ax handles" long -- about eleven feet. The bark 
was peeled off and wooden mauls and wooden wedges, made of 
ironwood or other very hard wood, were used to split it into halves, then 
quarters, then eighths, like pieces of pie. These in turn were split into 
roughly triangular or rectangular rails measuring about 4 by 4 or 3 by 5 
inches. The rails were laid on the ground in a very exact zigzag pattern 
with the ends extending a little over a foot from where they crossed. 
After the fence was seven or eight rails high, each corner was 
strengthened and braced by two other rails, or stakes, one on each side, 
sunk a foot or more in the ground and slanted upward to cross and hold 
the fence in place. These stake rails, in turn, were locked in place by an 
additional horizontal rail or "rider". Between seven and eight thousand 
rails were needed to build a mile of "worm" fence -- enough to enclose 
a forty-acre field.

Such fences, made entirely without any hardware, were quite 
serviceable for confining horses, cattle, sheep and hogs. However, some 
rails rotted and others broke, year by year, and they were rebuilt in 
other designs which used fewer rails and occupied less land. It seems 
quite certain that many of the rails now remaining are survivors from 
those original fences built when the land was first cleared. None remain 
except red oak, white oak and black walnut, weathered and gray but as 
sound as the day they were split. All those made from less durable 
woods are gone.

"Worm" fences seemed a prodigal waste of land in later years because 
they occupied from three to four times as much ground as the modern 
barbed wire and woven wire fences. They quickly grew up in wild 
roses, wild raspberries, wild blackberries, weeds and vines, furnishing 
food and cover for a host of wildlife. With the clearing of the timber 
and more and more intense cultivation of the land, these fences offered 
refuges where the quail, the cottontail rabbit and dozens of other birds 
and animals learned to live with civilization.

A favorite game played by generations of country school children was 
to see who could walk the top rail farthest without tumbling off.

Many an undesirable citizen left town riding on a rail.