Orrington Town Pound

That circle of stone wall beside Route Fifteen is not a mysterious ruin. It is a town pound, one of the most ordinary and forgotten institutions of early New England. Orrington was incorporated in seventeen eighty-eight, and as families turned the land to farms, loose cattle and horses became a problem. A wandering cow could trample a whole season of vegetables overnight.

The town built a wooden pound first. Wood was not very secure, so a stone pound was built to replace it, and that is the one that still stands. It worked like an early animal shelter. If you found a stray and did not know the owner, you shut it inside. If you lost an animal, the pound was the first place you looked. Farmers gathered here to buy and sell livestock too. The original iron gate still hangs in place.