SC-L28 The Many Faces of Rolling Hills

The Many Faces of Rolling Hills by Richard Stull

Do you know Rolling Hills? It's a small town near High Falls Park, about twenty miles outside the city. I had hardly given the place a thought until last month. That's when Mom and I went there to visit my aunt.

One great thing about our visit was the peach cobbler that my aunt made. Another great thing was what I learned about Rolling Hills. It gave me a whole new *viewpoint* on the area. It also made me think differently about the places where people live.

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My aunt moved to Rolling Hills three months ago. Her house looks brand-new. In my mind, the whole town looks brand-new. The streets are lined with houses, so I guess a lot of families live there. I saw kids playing together in the yards and cycling along the streets. It's a great place to live.

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I was in my aunt’s yard when I noticed an old building in the distance. Its walls had fallen down. I asked my aunt what the old building was doing in a new neighborhood like Rolling Hills.

My aunt told me that Rolling Hills had not always been like it is now. She said that all of the land around there had previously been a farm. I was amazed. I couldn’t believe that all the houses and yards were built on what had once been farmland.

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I asked my aunt about other aspects of Rolling Hills that used to be different. Of course, she told me to visit a library to find out. Aunts are always like that. Still, I did as she suggested.

The local librarian helped me find newspaper stories about Rolling Hills. Sure enough, it had once been a big farm with a farmhouse and a barn. Cattle grazed in fields where houses now stand.

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Then I got to thinking about what the whole area had been like before it was a farm. This time the librarian pointed out several books about the history of the county. From my reading, I learned that two hundred years ago, Rolling Hills was not a farm at all. It was all forest. There was no park nearby, and there was no city. The library wasn't here, either.

Settlers came here, **surveyed** the land, and decided that they were the only people around. Of course, they were wrong.

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American Indians lived in the area. They had lived here for hundreds of years before the settlers arrived. Back then, all the land in these parts was a thick forest. The people lived here for centuries without changing the land.

The Indians hunted in the forest and fished in the streams. The summers were probably very pretty. The winters were most likely quite harsh.

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I know it's hard to believe that this busy town was once completely rural. It's true, though.

So far, I've discovered that Rolling Hills is way more interesting than I would have believed, and I've researched only what the area was like a few hundred years ago. I wonder what it was like a thousand years ago, or ten thousand years ago. There might have been different kinds of trees. The hills might not have been as steep. Maybe musk oxen and mastodons lived here. Perhaps there were even saber-toothed tigers, too!

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