Saturday June 5th 2005

One of the best digs we had here in my home town was the dig behind the old central hotel, circa 1850. My local history book mentions two other early hotels, the Valley House, circa 1850 also, and the east end hotel, circa 1870.

The East End Hotel had been razed in the early 1900's and a house constructed on the site, using the old bricks from the hotels livery stable. This house is now a travel agency business. I had eyeballed the back of the lot, but it was really shallow, and covered with blacktop.

Then the day came not long ago where a feller I knew moved into the house behind the travel agency. This house had a small patch of grass for the back yard, and I got to thinking that maybe the hotel lot was longer back in the day, and that any pits from the hotel might be in this back yard.

I got permission from the new owner and after work one day, stopped off to probe and found two large stone liners in the corner of the lot. This house was from the 1920's at the earliest, and the town already had sewer service by then, so I was hoping that these were indeed the pits from the old hotel.

On a beautiful Saturday morning we descended upon the back yard with our implements of hole carving and opened up pit # 1.

This pit was about 5 by 5. We found some redware and saltglaze chunks high up in the fill, and proceeded downwards. Suddenly, under a foot of ash, at the four foot deep mark we hit a solid clay cap. Caps are rare in my town, so we probed through it and after about 2 feet of it the underneath loosened up considerably. The clay was mighty stiff, and we called on Mr. chisel tipped spud bar to break it up into big chunks for the heaving. Rod climbed out of the pit and I hopped in to see that one of the stone walls was undermined. I picked at it and scratched my monkey head, till it dawned on me what I was looking at. I grabbed the short probe and probed under the other 3 walls. Hmmmm. We re-probed straight down and this time felt the natural ground for what it was. We fillderin. DOH !!!

We then re-probed the other pit, and found a confusing rocky mess that was impossible to tell where any walls were. On one occasion where we were actually able to sink the long probe straight down all the way to the handle, we popped glass at almost 7 feet deep. Well then, we'll just have to dig directly down to that spot and see what turns up on the way down. Well, it took about 4 feet of vertical until we found the top of the stone walls amidst the jumble of massive lime stones. We were still missing our 4th wall, so I took the long probe into the side of the pit and finally found it, 7 feet away, with another 3 feet of pit behind the handle. This pit was 10 feet long !!! The bad part was, only 4 feet of it was on our side of the privacy fence. We decided to do what we could and try to get to the bottom without removing all the contents and causing a cave in on the adjoining property.

At 6 feet, our pile of lime stone slabs was the same size as our pile of dirt. On top of this, the giant maple tree a few feet away had decided to use the pit as it's main drinking hole, and the roots were tough as eels. When attempting to break them by hand they would shed their skin and leave a slippery, wet, slimy white core that nothing could be done with, save for chopping with a pruner, which we had none of, as I lost it a few pits back. Ooopsy. So, I went a few blocks up to the hardware store, and bought one, and came back, and vengeance on the roots was MINE !!!

We pried and hacked our way to about 8 feet where a nice glassy two foot thick layer was waiting. The shards were solid 70's to early 80's. One of the first things up was a yellow olive double tapered top whiskey neck. I was afraid to find the rest of the bottle and maybe be able to make out any embossing. Lucky for me, I guess, it wasn't in the pit. We started with a couple of cracked string lip wines and a broken amber cordial. I handed up our 2nd ever intact Hemingray pat. sept. 1860 fruit jar. It was sic as a dog too, and the white flakes were flying as I rubbed it off. Another fruity jumped out, a cunningham and ihmsen/ pittsburg, then about 5 wax sealer mouths.

Below, Rod flings, Mike ponders life.

We were keeping a close watch on the hanging wall. There was very little ash in the pit and lots of rocks and roots to help hold the hanging fill up, so with a trained eye peeled for cracks or trickling dirt, the foreboding of a cave in, we continued raking down through the glass.

Before long, the buckets being dumped were singing that old familiar tune of snap, tinkle and crash. Sodas started coming out in clusters, all smooth base, and some criminally unembossed. There were 2 overdikes, an overdiek mineral water, a plain jane with a star on the bottom, and a henry verhage. Mike handed up a twelve sided umbrella ink and an L.H. Thomas cone. A little half pint double eagle was passed up, and then a Haines's 3 quart fruity. There were TONS of broken mugs in this pit, but an intact example could not be found. A nice back bar bottle with GIN etched on it popped out. There was a flurry of broken meds with and intact sample or two thrown in on the bottom, and then the bottom was cleaned out in our 4 by 4 area and we started reluctantly scratching at the layer under the 10 foot WALL OF DEATH in front of us. Nothing else intact came out but the shards were decent with sided sodas and smashed flasks. We were able to undercut the wall by about 2 feet before the Grim Reaper started whispering welcomes into our ears and we pulled the last guy up and considered our options. We hated the thought of leaving all that layer go. We hadn't even uncovered half of the layer yet, and the age was good, and the shards were good too. It was getting late and we figured we would just have to get permission from the neighbor and re-dig the other side at some other time. So, away we filled.

The owner was working all day so we left him a nice selection of good bottles, including some sodas and the hemi jar. Hopefully he can help us get permission to dig the other half from his neighbor.

There remains to be dug, the Valley House Hotel. We know where two of the pits are, and are just waiting for some kind of reply to our repeated attempts at getting permission. Some nuts are tough to crack, and it takes the persistence of a privy digger to make them happen.

Next weekend,

more deep glass,

more mole man action !!!