One Yard, 11 Pits and all kinds of Glass Eye Candy!!

jgas · Apr 12, 2012

What an enjoyable yard this turned out to be for Don and myself. We have been to this yard for 3 or 4 days worth of digging and each time out we found more glass and more pits. But as the saying goes, it has to come to an end at some point right? :icon_scratch:

Well I think that day finally came. We knew we had a shallow pit, trash pit area to do so I got there just before Don and started to get dirty. About a foot or so under the soil I uncovered a blob beer from around 1890 or so. Great start :thumbsup:

Then I kept on digging and saw several more just below that. It took everything I had not to pull all of them out before Don got there, but I surprised myself and just sat on a clump of grass until he arrived, which felt like an hour but was more like a minute :laughing7:

He saw the first bottle I pulled out and he practically dove head first into the pit after the next one. :headbang:

It was one blob beer after another for a while there. The great part was that most everything was intact. Then I saw the mini whiskey jug. Pulled it out and yep, it was whole, handle intact and little wear. :icon_thumleft:

Then it was Don's turn and he saw the base of a seltzer bottle. Now mind you, we have never pulled one of these out whole. :BangHead:

But our chances were good for this one. He pulled it out of its resting place and sure enough it was whole, top still in tact and a bonus that it was acid etched with Henry Stein of Plymouth Indiana. :occasion14:

That's what I am talking about. Cool finds like that keep us digging for more history of the area. After all was said and done on this "little pit", we pulled out about 14 beers, a jug, the seltzer and a few others. :headbang:

Don thought we were done, but alas it was not to be...Near the back of the garage we probed around and sure enough pit number 9 and counting. This one was deep by this yards standards, around 8 feet. So we charged in like mad ground hogs and started to find more beers. Later stuff but not bad. This pit was also filled with sand as a huge cap to cover the use layer. That stuff is heavy...But we made it through to find a few more keepers to end the day. But as a rule of thumb, we always probe to the sides when we are that deep to see if we can reach another pit nearby. Sure enough pit number 10 was 2 feet away right behind the garage :thumbsup:

And this one was around 9 feet deep. So we came back the next morning and tore into this one just to keep warm. It was about 30 degrees and windy.

After an hour of digging we finally were able to get to the use layer that was about a foot thick. We pulled out a nice milk and some more beers. Then like the day before Don saw another seltzer base. He pulled this one out but it was not etched, but it did have the top nozzle still intact. Crazy after all these years. It was protected a bit by the garage from the elements! We finished this pit with a pile of beers, some blank milks and a cool mini mason that appears to be a late throw. Then Don said that was it for this yard....I beg to differ, so I probed a bit more and found a small trash pit that ended up being some rust, broken shards of 1920's stuff and a broken straight sided coke :BangHead:

Oh well, this yard was toast now, or so I thought. I probed and probed in hopes of another to make it an even 12, but it was not to be. Don did find two more just across the fence in a vacant lot, but I will have to get the owners permission to do those. I will politic a bit and keep my fingers crossed for a future dig there. I hope you enjoy the pictures, there is plenty of glass eye candy to look at. Not the ones of Don or me of course :tongue3:

. All in all I would estimate 300 to 400 bottles were tossed into all these privies and trash pits. We kept a few to say the least. As always be careful out there and good luck on your next treasure hunt!! :thumbsup:

jgas