July 22nd Results

July 22nd Digging Results

You guessed it, another under the parking lot privy. This spot was found by accident while probing an adjacent yard. While I was probing a friend's of mine yard for a possible dig site, he told me there was an old train side tavern back in the 1800's he heard of on the lot next door to him.
He said they had torn the old wooden structure down back in the early 1970's. The property now has a vacant house on it with a parking lot in the back of it. I asked my friend if he knew the owner and he said he would give them a call about a possible dig there. We had a go-ahead 10 minutes later. NOT BAD!
The whole time (prior to the phone call) I had been eyeballing a large depression in the old broken up black top. With the green light on, I eagerly darted over to the depression for a stab at the black top. At first I couldn't get through the top layer, so I went to the truck and pulled out the solid 2" steel handled probe. Now it went through with ease. Right away I knew this was a pit. It was full of ash and very soft, hence the sunken spot!

Luckily I had my pick with me, because you never know when you're going to need a pick right? I busted a square outline on the black-top of where I thought the pit was with the sharp point of the pick and began pulling out chunks of blacktop.

I hope this is worth the work!!! We'll see.....

About 3 feet down in the thick ash I got the first indication of what year we were in here. It was a pretty good sign, and I was getting excited. Time to dig some more.

Here is a great starter piece. A crude applied-top bottle!

Well the pit is still solid ash and only 2 more bottles have come out.

It loked like something when I took the picture, REALLY.

This pit was about 20 feet from the rail road tracks, I found out when the ground started shaking and the dirt in the hole was falling in on my head. I jumped out of that hole in a second flat, ABOUT 5 TIMES THAT DAY!

This was surely a tavern, it was full of pumpkin seed flasks. Look at the color of this strap sided flask.

I was kind of disappointed at the absence of any real cool tavern type bottles. This pit was down to the 6 foot level at this point.

Where are all the friggin bottles?????

Here is what I know about this 1880's tavern; They only got sick twice, and they had a bird!

Right about now in the dig, I was really starting to ask my self why I dug through this parking lot looking for bottles?? Then right on the bottom of the pit, two pretty rare Colorado female remedies came out.

From what I understand, these are pretty rare bottles! These bottles where on the very bottom, below what a dipper (or honey dipper) could reach to easily. They are about 10 years older than the rest of the stuff found.

The rest of the bottles weren't as impressive.

Thanks for reading. Come back again. Oh yeah, one last note. If anybody is wondering why we are so slow on stories and digging trips, it's because I have changed jobs and have been training to fly jets now!! WEEEEEEEEEE.