The Turner Cattle Pound is a well-preserved example of a once common feature in early Maine agricultural communities. Many of Maine's inland communities were agricultural settlements, embracing a more privatized model of land ownership and grazing in comparison to the publicly-held "town common" model that was more prevalent in Massachusetts. Nevertheless, in both agricultural models cattle and other livestock often wandered from their owners and communities needed dedicated places to detain these animals until their owners could retrieve them. The 1635 law passed by the Massachusetts Bay Colony that required the construction of municipal animal pounds responded directly to this concern, and led to the creation of the Turner Cattle Pound and others like it across the future state of Maine. The cattle pound in Turner was constructed of fieldstone in 1816, roughly in the shape of a square, 30 feet long on each side. In the ensuing centuries, the stone walls of the pound have settled and toppled in spots, but the two granite posts and lintel still stand to mark the portal. The invention of barbed wire in 1873 facilitated the fencing in of large private fields, and within a few decades cattle pounds became obsolete.
Year listed: 2009
For more information: https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/AssetDetail?assetID=ec4add1e-b52b-49c1-a848-8e3b4a3e6b96