Kevin Gardner, author of The Granite Kiss, says the building of these miles of stonewalls, mostly between 1790 and 1820, was a huge, unparalleled feat of architecture. Many stonewalls were later toppled by fallen trees or frost heaves. Others were cleared to make way for farming equipment. As soon as the scythe and hand-held rake gave way to horse-drawn equipment around time of Civil War, stonewalls became an impediment, because the horse and mowing machine turned in an arc that left the corner of each field unmowed. Mowing by tractor brought no better use of these unmown corners, so old walls were removed. And after floods, highway repair crews piled in rock from old stonewalls and then shoveled in gravel to fill the breach, causing stretches of walls along some hillsides to disappear.

Acworth's population is now around 830, and residents who watch subdivision applications and building permits have the impression our population is growing awfully fast. It's useful to recall that in 1810 Acworth had 1,526 residents, nearly twice as many as we have now. That didn't necessarily mean more households, because families were so much larger. In fact about a third of those residents were school-age children. Today only about 15% of the town's population is comprised of school-age children.

Acworth's population declined steadily after 1810, first because soil proved too poor for continuous farming, and second because the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 and the development of railroads around 1850 took the profit out of farmers' cash crops, first flax, later wool, butter and cheese, maple sugar. The farm families who migrated westward left behind cellar holes, old wells, apple trees, lilacs, and Concord grape vines. Most moved to New York State or further west, for example Illinois.

The  Civil  War  caused more  rapid  decline  because  young men in the Union Army saw better land and better opportunities in the south and west. The Acworth they left behind was almost entirely cleared land. Today two-thirds to three-fourths of New Hampshire is forest; in the 1860s two-thirds to three-fourths of New Hampshire was cleared land, mostly sheep pasture. Acworth’s farms raised literally tons of wool, for Army uniforms, blankets, and saddle blankets, some of it woven at the woolen mill in South Acworth. In the 1870s and 1880s, steam locomotives burned huge piles of cordwood, which was very inefficient, since the trains had to haul some of this heavy fuel supply on board. But Acworth farmers spent winters logging and hauling firewood over to North Walpole to meet the trains.

A century later forests had overgrown the old sheep pastures and given rise to different industries, such as Balla’s sawmill. Many of today's residents think of their woods as pretty valuable as they contemplate heating with firewood, given the high costs of heating oil and propane. Henry David Thoreau said, "Every man looks at his woodpile with a certain kind of affection." And that’s certainly true today.

The low point of Acworth's population came in 1960, when the census counted just 371 residents. In the hippie years, of the late sixties and early seventies, people began moving back to the land, so that in 1970 the population was around 460. These were younger people, some of them childless, and some trying out different communal lifestyles.

Today many people seem to want to live in Acworth to get away from it all, the stress of faster-paced city life, traffic, pollution, noise. But for most of the town's history, the emphasis instead was on coming together. Originally everyone's driveway was town-maintained, because roads were intended to connect houses and families whose menfolk constituted a highway district. There were thirty-two highway districts in 1810; most covered a very small area. Men figured the cost of necessary construction and repair, assessed highway tax on each household, and then either worked out their highway tax or paid it in cash. Widows and the elderly might need to pay in cash. Most men worked with team of oxen or horses and a dump cart shoveling, raking, and spreading gravel. The system changed gradually as old backwoods farms were given up or burned down, and these roads were "thrown up" by the town, meaning there was no longer any tax-supported maintenance. Today these abandoned roads are still public rights of way. Several, such as the Keyes Hollow Road and the Dodge Hollow Road in East Acworth, have been made into wonderful conservation trails. These and many others are widely used by cross-country skiers, snowmobilers, and horseback riders.

Most of these old roads followed rivers and streams, which is why the October 2005 floods did such terrible road damage. The reasons are both geological and historical. First, even a small stream carves out a valley, such as Honey Brook alongside route 123A going out to Marlow. Most townspeople considered that a pretty insignificant stream until it destroyed the road. The same holds true for Thayer Brook that runs alongside the Forest Road from South Acworth to Alstead. Because the streams carved a fairly flat, broad valley, they made road building easier. Second, the larger rivers, particularly the Connecticut, had always been the highways, first for Native Americans, then for early white settlers. Hotels or taverns sprang up near these rivers, served the highways that followed the rivers, and then the railroads that followed in the 1850s. Stretches of Route 12 in Charlestown where we see the Connecticut River, Route 12, and the railroad through North Walpole represent all these forms of transportation: the River the oldest, the railroad the newest, and the state highway right in between.

Communities formed along these rivers because of water power. While farming was the first way to make a living in Acworth, mills soon followed. The early settlements on high ground, Acworth Center, or in other towns Alstead Center or Marlow Hill, were soon followed by mill settlements in the river valleys, for example in South Acworth and East Acworth. This transition from hilltop farming to river valley mill towns is true of Alstead, Marlow, and countless other towns as well. We can see this settlement pattern not only in South Acworth, but also where the Grout Hill and Gates Mountain Roads meet across 123A. There stands a cluster of small houses built too close together to be surrounded by fields. Barns in such mill settlements weren't the huge barns that stored hay and dairy cattle, but smaller stables for one milk cow and a driving horse. That kind of community suggests an old mill cluster. These are clearly visible in Marlow and also along Alstead's Mechanic Street and River Street or in East Alstead's Mill Hollow before the destructive 2005 flood.