Excavating the Heaton Agate factory site

[cheese]

New Heaton marbles from a recent factory excavation

The factory is leveled and fill dirt is being brought in. A group of collectors got together and contacted the owner and paid him for permission to excavate the property before it was buried forever. Here is some of what I found.

 

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[cheese]

 

[No gold in NY]

Those sure are some beauties. How about a short story to go with the pictures?

 

[No gold in NY]

Lucky you guys found out about that before it was too late.

 

[Carolina Tom]

Very cool Cheese!

 

[cheese]

It was an all-day drive for me to get there. I arrived a couple days early and got to see some of the old marble factories (most of American marbles were made in one area of West Virginia). I got to see the world's largest and most complete Akro collection. I saw probably the most completer swirl collection and several one of a kind pieces and items in that collection. Then I went back to the hotel and couldn't fall asleep with my mind working on the dig the following morning. Finally I fell asleep around 2am and had to get up at 5am to be on site by daybreak.

I got on site and they had coffee and a fire waiting for us (It was 27 degrees). I dug pretty much nonstop until dusk without even taking a break for a meal. I did take some photos of the last standing building and the equipment underneath it. It's all leveled now and under several feet of fill dirt. The machinery is probably 8 to 10 feet under the surface now, with the building demolished above it and dirt on top. I saved the glass furnace temperature recorder (the clock looking piece), the glass tank outlet, several unused tank orifices, much of the company paperwork that was left in the building, and several marble bag headers. Here are photos of those things, a picture of the ground where I was digging, and the building and a bucket of finds.