I used to hike allot through the Virginia countryside
and would come across above ground bottle piles. I mentioned this to an antique dealer (in ohio) and she said "grab all the cobalt you can and store it in your basement!! Those bottles will be worth money someday." I began to collect the cobalt glass all the while noticing other interesting bottles.  I started to see mason jars, milk bottles, creamers, old pill bottles..etc... and began to wonder about those, so i purchased my first bottle guide...then another bottle guide..then another...soon my house was filled with all types of bottles..I did have to make a few trips to the glass recycler once i started to see what was what.  Soon a whole world that was right under my nose opened up!  I spent hours upon hours hiking around Northern Virginia, into maryland and West Virginia in search of the ultimate bottles.  My first big score was a heavily embossed blown crown top soda from Washington D.C. that was found under an abandoned house from the   1800's .  Again, I began searching houses, barns, and around old foundations for remnants of the past.  One of my favorite scores was in an old barn in a town called ashburn, Va.  .   I dug this barn that was filled with booze bottles.  I could just see the story in my head.  This guy hiding from his wife having a couple snorts in the barn and throwing the bottle under the floorboards.    Most of the bottles I got there were near mint because there were horses boarded in the barn and they were continuously passing over these floorboards spreading their dung around.  The dung passed through the cracks in the floorboards encasing the bottles and preserving them.  I pulled out a few that still had labels from over 100 years ago.  The labels fell apart when they got out into the air though.  It was amazing to me that the innards of the barn were covered with graffiti and beer cans and after all that partying and hanging out no one noticed those bottles.  I simply walked in the barn and peeked under this section of floorboards and there was a whiskey flask embossed: kentucky house..3243 m st. n.w.  Georgetown, d.c. wow!!!
I  soon tore up some  old floorboards and using a flightless, target arrow to poke through the poop and tink the bottles, I pulled out about fifty bottles.  Alot were embossed only on the bottoms with j.t.f. wash. d.c. but the highlights were all whiskeys and flasks:

kentucky house..3243 m st. n.w.  Georgetown, d.c.

somerset r. waters   seventh and o sts.   washington, d.c.

the james clark distilling co.   braddock pure rye
mcquaide & mccarthy mangers   washington, d.c.

d.j. o'connell  washington, d.c.
my specialty  oronoco whiskey

medicines:
Barker, Moore, and Mein

National Remedy Co.

I now reside in Los Angeles, Ca.  which is a very interesting dig that takes lots of research and intuition which I'm learning slowly.  I've actually repelled for bottles.  There are a few I can see from the ground that are stuck in this cliff out of reach.  The others I tied off a good section of rope and lowered myself down to retrieve.  A scary thing when you've got crazy homeless wandering above..."what's this rope for???"   Ahhhhhh!!!   hee hee hee    Anyways,  until the next time...Patrick

Howdy All!!

Here's the latest dig report for Los Angeles.
I was browsing through an antique store in Pomona, Ca.
when the owner asked what I was hunting for.  I told
him I like bottles and he lit up!  He proceeded to
drag me to the back of his store and show me all his
treasure hunting finds and gear.  He had some bottles
from the 1950's which I kinda humored him about.  Not
that all bottles from the fifties aren't collectible,
I prefer the 1800's stuff.  There are some pretty
valuable pyro-glazed milks and sodas from then that
are sought after.( Pyro-glazing is a label or
lettering that appears to be painted on the bottle)
Jeff the storeowner and I started to trade knowledge
about digging and hunting and the next thing you know
we are in a vacant lot with a late 1800's Sanborn Fire
Insurance map looking for an old outhouse.  We found
some marbles and Jeff found an old Bakelite knife.
Oddly enough, I found almost the exact same knife in
the drawer of a kitchen of an abandoned house in
Pittsburgh shortly after.
Jeff attended an  L.A. bottle club meeting after our
dig day.  He came back with news that over the years
diggers had been turning up bottles by a park near the
Santa Monica Pier.  We made plans to hook up and go
digging down there, but work picked up for me and he
ended up going alone.  I lost touch with him until
after the first of this year when I dropped by his
store to pass on the second Bakelite knife I had
acquired in Pittsburgh.  He freaked as well seeing how
closely they resembled eachother.  Again, he dragged
me to the back of his store and showed me some 1930's
stuff  at best, and shared a couple recent digs he'd
gone on with the L.A. bottle club.  I poked more
through his latest finds when he comes back from the
front of the store with a glazed, white, stoneware
ginger beer (1890-1930) claiming he found it by the
pier. WOW!!
"Now we're cookin' with grease."  We kinda made some
plans to connect but never did; so on to the park by
the pier I went.
The best description of this place is a grassy, palm
treed, well-kept, arena for the homeless.  The park
itself is about 6 blocks long and 50' wide with Ocean
Ave. on one side and a giant, sloping, washed away,
cliff on the other with Pacific Coast Hwy "pch" at the
bottom.  A 4' concrete fence is the only thing keeping
you from the cliff's edge. As I was saying, a whole
community of homeless are scattered along the stretch
in sleeping bags, on mats, under trees and walking
along in bunches of 2's 3's and 4's.  You can tell
it's a whole society with it's own rules.  I needed
change at one point to feed the meter so began asking
the homeless. I figured they get lots in the form of
change so someone would have it. One guy laughed like
I was asking something totally insane, only to end by
saying " I'll change that dollar from your hand to
mine! Ha ha ha."  I finally asked the right two bag
ladies who directed me to a large cripple woman with a
walker sitting under a tree.  I wandered up and
noticed she had a half zipped bag with about a carton
worth of smokes in it, a radio and some other rather
nice things.  She even had some guy cozying up next to
her!  I guess she was Miss
got-it-going-on-in-the-park. Between her and the guy,
they had my change.
After peering over the cliff, I realized I had to get
down to the bottom to the exposed ground to start
scoring any kind of bottles.  I jumped a section of
the concrete fence where I saw a beaten dirt path
heading down the cliff a bit.  As I jumped and made my
way down I came across a lot of modern trash and
blankets, cardboard for sleeping on and the like.  I
didn't have a clue as to where or how to come up with
any old bottles amidst this stuff until I saw a bottle
fused neck first into the side of the hill. The bottle
dated probably 1960, so I began to see for the first
time how this place works for bottle hunting.
People had been throwing random trash over this cliff
for well over 100 years and the trash would be covered
by eroding dirt and biodegrading vegetation. Rains
would come and further erosion and re-expose old trash
and mix it with new trash.  You could consider this
hillside kind of like a giant, working, time capsuled,
organism! This is one the most fun places I have ever
dug.  Once this understanding started to sink in I
began cruising the sidewalk at the base of the cliff
scanning the eroded hillside.  After a few minutes
scanning about 15' up I saw the horizontal profile of
an amber bottle, a circular outline of the base of
another, and the grey white glaze of what I thought to
be a stoneware bottle fused into the cliff.  I soon
scaled the cliff and was chipping away at the
sandstoney dirt and scoring my first ever, awesome
stoneware gingerbeer. The other two bottles next to it
were blown amber beers. YES!!!….I returned a few more
times to unearth several other nice bottles.  I found
my first Dr J. Hostetter's Stomach Bitters but the lip
was broken  ):  Also another porcelain doll, a cobalt
blue Bromo-Seltzer from Baltimore, an Indian head
nickel belt buckle (70's) etc….Another great find was
a milk bottle Pyro-glazed 13000 Ventura Blvd.  My wife's
office is on the 13000 block of Ventura and there sure
aint a dairy there. COOL!!! 

My mother-in-law made an interesting observation to the fact that the  Santa Monica Pier has been standing for many, many years and some little girl may have won the doll at one of the booths there only to toss it over cliff while playing possibly. (or she had a mean little brother : )
It's raining as I write so the hill will reconfigure
yet again.