ConchDigger
Active Member
Hi everyone. I just did my first privy dig. "Wow" is all I can say. My grandmother dug the beach dumps down here for years and I, to this day, have never seen a more extensive bottle collection. But, I don't think anyone has ever really dug the privies in town. If you're familiar with Key West, you know it is an old "wrecking" and shipping city and received imports from all over the world. The privies are stone lined and not that deep as we are near sea level. My first dig was on top of the only "hill" on the island where the properties date back to mid 1800's. I found that many of these properties have been in the same families for years and they sometimes didn't remove all of the stones from around the tops of the privies when they took the enclosures down. So far, in the three yards I have permissions in, I walked right to the back and found the stones still outling the privies. On my 1st dig, I got a couple of pontils, some Cuban ales, and lots of old medicines/cures. But, the neatest things I found were gold! No, not pirates gold...although there are old pirate's treasure stories here on the island. I found a 2" diam. victorian gold lion's head locket with ruby eyes and a diamond in the mouth and an gold encased pocket watch (looks like 18 kt, but no stamping on it). I also found a porceline doll, an old bullet casing, and lots of marbles. Is that unusual? I haven't really seen mention of those sorts of things in that quantity on one dig. One thing I found that is probably unique to Key West was alot of conch shells - the old timers sure did love to eat 'em back then! I don't even think that was the oldest pit on the property either. I've got a couple more permissions already and can't wait to make time for them. Does anyone here ever dig down this way? We'll thanks and I hope I haven't bored anyone.
ConchDigger
ConchDigger
]
