Rugged, irregular and enduring, stone walls so clearly reflect Granite State culture that lawmakers are cracking down on those who steal from the walls.

Gov. John Lynch signed a new law Friday that boosts the fine for stealing stones from $15 to three times the cost of restoring the wall, in addition to legal costs.

The law takes effect Sept. 29.

Reed Clark, 79, of Londonderry is glad.

His family's land goes back to 1839. The stone walls that stretch across the property were built by his great-grandfather Reed Page Clark, a farmer and blacksmith.

The walls represent his labor — stones unearthed while plowing fields — and mark boundaries. One of them played a role in his demise in January 1880.

"He died putting a rock right up there," Clark said, pointing to the wall in his front yard.

Clark speculates a horse shifted unexpectedly, causing a large rock to fall on his great-grandfather's leg, breaking it. He died of gangrene, Clark said.

To Clark, the construction of stone walls represents history, hard work and time.

"A horse, a winch and a rope, and a lot of time," he said. "It says New Hampshire to me."

Bill Veillette, executive director of the New Hampshire Historical Society, agrees.

"They are evidence of a very different way of life," he said of the walls.

To some people, they represent the heavy labor of forbearers, who cut trees, pulled stumps, plowed fields and hauled away and piled the stones that heaved with the thawing soil each year, he said.

Veillette said it seems like an assault on the state's heritage to disassemble the walls.

The stones in the walls far predate statehood.

Glacial ice picked up soil and a variety of rocks from land to the northwest as it advanced across what would become New England, said Lee Wilder of the New Hampshire Geological Survey in Concord.

About 20,000 years ago, when the climate warmed and the ice retreated, it deposited soil and rocks across the landscape, the rocks and soil falling as if from a giant, melting, dirty ice cube, he said.

The rock mixture, including granite, gneiss and schist, were angular and ideal for stone wall construction.

One of those walls, made famous by poet Robert Frost, still stands in Derry — a three-minute walk in the woods from the Robert Frost Farm on Route 28.

That's the wall in "Mending Wall," a poem in which Frost and a neighbor walk and repair the wall in the spring, and the neighbor says, "Good fences make good neighbors."

Today, a caretaker at the farm, Steve Ormond of Derry, said Frost later constructed a few stone steps in a breach in that wall to prevent people from climbing over it and disturbing the stones.

To this day, about 80 percent of the visitors to the farm take that short walk through the woods and pause by the tree-shaded mending wall.

Meanwhile, what, in part, gave rise to the new legislation is that some people did not know it was illegal to go into the woods and take stones from walls, said one of the bill's cosponsors, Rep. John Henson, D-Exeter.

He and two colleagues also filed the legislation after hearing from constituents whose walls had been taken.

Last year, Londonderry lost 500 feet of a stone wall to rock thieves in Leslie C. Bockes Memorial Forest.

The stones are valuable to those who want to use them on their properties, replicating the old stone wall look.

Londonderry also has a new local regulation on its books that calls for builders to restore stone walls to their original condition when they are disturbed by a new site plan or subdivision development, Town Planner Tim Thompson said.

Londonderry preservationist and Town Councilor Kathy Wagner said the new regulation follows the reassembly of a wall that had been taken down for construction at the corner of Buttrick and Mammoth roads a few years ago.

The rebuilt wall looked too nice, it didn't have a handmade quality to it, she said.

Still, why the fuss over old walls?

Wagner said each wall, each stone tells a story.

"They mean hard work and respect," she said.

Mark Oswald, a member of the Londonderry Conservation Commission and a real estate agent, said New England charm has a strong pull for many people.

"Stone walls are one of our hallmarks," he said. "It was part of our heritage."

Oddly, it isn't rock thieves who have removed most of the stone walls, Veillette said.

"Probably the biggest destroyer of stone walls are road builders funded by tax dollars," he said.

Clark lost stone walls on his property when he sold land to make room for the construction of Interstate 93 many years ago.

Whether lost to thieves or progress, Clark and others want to hold on to as much of the remaining old stone walls as possible.

And as to that age-old question of whether good fences make good neighbors?

"Back in the old days it certainly made you a good neighbor," Clark said. "Because no one crossed the boundary."

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