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Who built the Berkeley Mystery Walls and what was their purpose?


The walls are not continuous and are composed of multiple sections, so they are not fences. They are not tall enough to have been used as defensive barriers. The East Bay Regional Park District simply calls them "rock walls" and notes that they are not mysterious. Livestock, such as cattle, have grazed in the east and south Bay Area hills since the arrival of European settlers. Clearing land of scattered rocks would have eased the ability to move livestock. Placing the rocks into walls would have helped to guide the movement of the animals or to help corral them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Bay_Walls

Posted - January 17, 2017
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  • I found this one article that seems to explain them and another that doesn't. Guess they might always be a mystery.
    The Easter Island statues. Stonehenge. Berkeley Mystery Walls? The general public might not know much about the walls that stop and start across the landscape in the Bay Area and are the subject of tons of speculation. Were they made by aliens? Are they relics from survivors of a lost continent? It turns out, they’re not much of a mystery, according to Beverly Ortiz, cultural services coordinator with the East Bay Regional Park District. “We just call them rock walls,” she says. Analysis places them in the early American era, when European settlers are said to have built the walls using the labor of marginalized groups, such as Chinese and Native American laborers. The walls were used mainly to clear land of scattered rocks to facilitate the movement of grazing livestock, such as cattle, and, at times, to guide the movement of the animals or to corral them. So take off your tinfoil hats: Even though the walls don’t, in fact, have otherworldly origins, they provide snapshots of an interesting time in our history.

    Berkeley Mystery Walls – Fremont, California | Atlas Obscura

      January 17, 2017 12:41 PM MST
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  • Pity we can't ask Waldorff. He lives in Fremont. 
      January 17, 2017 1:42 PM MST
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