Indian old field

Indian Old Field, or simply Old Field, was a common term used in Colonial American times and up until the early nineteenth century United States, by American explorers, surveyors, cartographers and settlers, in reference to land formerly cleared and utilized by Indians for farming (corn fields or vegetable patches) or occupation. The term appears in many old maps and land documents, often persisting for many decades. It also remains in a number of present-day place names of the Eastern US.

Pioneer settlers, in applying for their land grants, exhibited a strong preference for sites located along major trails and particularly those coinciding with these Old Fields, as the Native Americans had often prepared land for settlement. Thus, early land survey plats emphasized these features and many place names from New England south to Florida represent vestiges of these places.

The earliest white settlers of Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, which had been vacated by the Indians, noted “Indian old fields”. On the earliest Virginia map to show the upper Chesapeake watershed and Allegheny Mountains in any detail (the Jefferson-Fry map of 1751) an extensive area of “old fields” known as “Shawno Fields” was designated at the mouth of the South Branch of the Upper Potomac River. (About nine miles upstream further extensive clearings were noted by the first settlers. A post office and community, "Old Fields", exists at this site to the present day.)

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