Stone Age

June 16, 2025

Bison Hut keeps the art of dry stacking stone alive with a hand-built wall in Versailles, Mo.

Words by Andrea Darr | Photos by Josie Benefield

Today’s house projects are often about efficiency: How fast a job can get done and for how cheap.

When building stone walls around a garden or house, the easy route uses glue and mortar to hold them up. This construction method can fail after 20 or 30 years—a timeline many homeowners are used to by now.

But it didn’t used to be that way. Travel along the pine-studded roads of the Northeast or Pacific Northwest, and you’ll see stone walls that have been there for centuries. Back then, they didn’t use concrete or pavers; they used gravity, and the method still works today.

If time-honored craftsmanship is your preferred path, be prepared for your dry-stacked stone wall to outlast you and maybe your grandkids, too.

Brad Elpers is one of only two certified dry stone wallers in the area.

“These walls are so beautiful, so elegant—majestic, really,” he says. “They are like a large lawn ornament.”

A dry-stacked stone wall costs much more than just the stone; assembling the wall is labor-intensive and significantly increases the expense.

“Only people with a large disposable income can afford it,” Elpers says honestly.

He got into dry stacking after a walking tour around Italy in 2017, during which the group dove into music, poetry, architecture and history. It was literally life-changing. Elpers returned to the States with a resolution to learn three things: an old-world trade, to play a musical instrument, and to speak a foreign language.

He attended a dry-stack stone wall workshop at The Stone Trust in Vermont and began building small projects around his house (while playing the harmonica and working with an Italian tutor, in case you were wondering).

“It was a fun way to pass the time,” he recalls. “The days would fly by, and when I lost track of time, that got my attention.”

He returned to Vermont to get certified by the Dry Stone Walling Association of Great Britain and added that rare skill to his sauna-building business, Bison Hut.

“This is not production work, it’s artistry and craftsmanship,” Elpers says. “Dry stone stacking calls people like that.”

At a property in Versailles, Mo., he shipped in 36 tons of Oklahoma sandstone on two semi-trucks. Elpers unpacked, dressed and stacked the stone by hand.

“I only used chisels and hammers, and I built the entire project in six weeks by myself,” he says.

The homeowners wanted the wall to resemble an old sheep pen—rustic, irregular and not too perfect. Sections of rock are covered in moss.

“I had been so conditioned working in Johnson County on perfect-looking walls that I spent the first two weeks on 30 feet of wall,” Elpers says. “The homeowner kept telling me to let it have more character—like the stone was all that was left of an old homestead.”

Proper drainage is key to a long-lasting wall. A deep bed of gravel and pipes behind the wall keep water away from the base. Because there is no mortar, the wall is able to shift and move subtly with the heaving and thawing of seasonal change, thereby making it stronger and more durable.

The walls are stacked wider at the bottom and tapered at the top so that the stones lean back on each other. Cavities are filled with smaller rocks, and heavy stones cap the wall to hold it in place.

The strain of heavy lifting takes a toll on the body, but Elpers’ decade as a yoga teacher means he knows how to move mindfully to reduce injury.

He finds the process meditative. In a recent Instagram post, he wrote: “This is my therapy. Tune the world out and be with Earth. The soundtrack of my mentors’ guidance playing in my head. Again and again. One stone at a time. Earth to rubble to art.”

At 52, Elpers is late to this kind of career—“That’s why I got into saunas,” he notes, as wood is a lighter, easier material to work with—but he is so passionate about dry stacking that he’s trying to change the system, bringing more craftsmen to the industry to keep the legacy alive.

“I’m working with the Stone Trust to open a satellite training center here in Kansas City by 2026 to offer education and training for hobbyists and professionals,” he says.

bisonhut.com; @bisonhut