Solid Stonework: Building Rock Fence Posts

Looking for an environmentally friendly way to use field stones? Try building some rock fence posts; in this DIY article, you’ll learn how to put in fence posts without concrete.

In the Rocky Mountain region, rocks proliferate at an incredible rate. They don't even require water or fertilizer. Every spring, the Earth gives birth to more. We remove the rocks from the soil, but what can we do with this bumper crop of well-rounded, glacially altered lumps of ground-up ancient mountain range? Fences. Or, more accurately, rock fence posts.

Building walls from field stones is an old agricultural practice. As we started fencing our small acreage in the Bitterroot Valley, Montana, I thought about those old-timers and the durability of their stone fences. However, since we don't have 300 years, 100 employees, or the patience of our forebears, we decided to forgo the complete stone fence and confine the stonework to posts in strategic locations: the weakest spots in fence construction, corners, gates, and terrain transitions.

Here's our method for building a stone fence post without using cement.

Instead of using one of those fancy gates that we see around our area, with two huge posts and a large top cross piece to keep the vertical posts from leaning in under the weight of the gates, we wanted to stay with the rock post look. So, we decided to use an enlarged version of the rock post with a larger wooden post attached to the outside. Building a stone gate post follows much of the same process as that for the regular stone posts. The primary difference is that a 7-inch-diameter, 8-foot-tall gate post is used here.

Creating such rock posts is somewhat time-consuming and laborious. However, it's a great way to use materials at hand while simultaneously building something that's sturdy, useful, and long-lasting.

Eventually, the lower portion of the wooden posts will rot away. By that time, I anticipate that the rock post will have settled, though not by much, and will be extremely stable, holding the upper part of the wooden posts in place for many, many years.

Ward and Kammy Thurman make their home in the Bitterroot Valley of Montana. You can follow their adventures on YouTube@sapphiremountainfarm7073.

Originally published as "Solid Stonework: Building Thrifty Fence Posts" in the March/April 2023 issue of Grit and regularly vetted for accuracy.