Bottle hunting in Guam

[botlguy]

Another great, interesting story, thanks. And THANK YOU for your service to our country.

 

[daven2nl]

ORIGINAL: DaddyDaughterDiggers

Great pictures Daven, love the history you shared with us. The dump you found looks great. Is it all surface glass or deeper?

The stuff I find is all surface glass. I know in some cases the military buried trash, but usually they dug trenches and burned it periodically, leaving it uncovered. I suspect in this area, I'm finding bottle scatters from what used to be 55 gallon drum trash barrels, now completely rusted away, and bottles scattered over the years by pigs rooting around. I also find random bottles around foxhole areas and the edges of old clearings - like they threw the empties into the edge of the clearings.

I have a metal detector but one of the first times I used it, I dug up some unexploded mortar rounds. I don't go metal detecting any more. There is a lot of unexploded ordnance around. I found a grenade during a previous hike not far from where I took these pictures.

I have really been looking hard for some older bottles - from the prewar years. The Holy Grail out here is an Agana Guam embossed coke bottle from the 30s. As far as anyone knows, none exist in whole condition. So far I have found nothing definitively pre-war. I've found what looks like older bottles (turn mold style) but without any date embossing, I don't know if they are old or if they are Japanese. I likely am walking right over old bottles, but it gets overwhelming at times when there are so many to look at.

Supposedly there are privies out here but I have never found one. The old pre-war structures on the ranches were all thatched huts - nothing left to use as reference to know where to look. The actual villages were all destroyed in the war and got bulldozed flat and rebuilt.

-Dave

 

[myersdiggers1998]

I hope you grabbed all those cokes.

 

[daven2nl]

ORIGINAL: myersdiggers1998

I hope you grabbed all those cokes.

I can't in this location, because it's federal property. There are plenty in other places though. I have about a dozen or so, all pretty nice examples, just for my collection. I suppose I could go into the Ebay hobbleskit coke selling business because there are hundreds if not thousands laying out in the jungle but it sort of goes against my morals of trying to "tread lightly" and to try to preserve these areas for the next guy with the same interest as me.

 

[Asterx]

Nice story and photos, thanks for sharing!

 

[GEEMAN]

Too cool Dave. Thanks for posting this.

 

[tigue710]

great post

 

[rockbot]

Should have some nice Hawaii coke bottles there. Good luck, be safe!

 

[sandchip]

ORIGINAL: botlguy

Another great, interesting story, thanks. And THANK YOU for your service to our country.

Ditto that.

 

[daven2nl]

ORIGINAL: rockbot

Should have some nice Hawaii coke bottles there. Good luck, be safe!

Actually, out of every 10 hobbleskirt cokes I come across, only one is your standard green city embossed PAT-D bottle. Usually from either Oakland, San Francisco, Portland, or Seattle. I recently found a 1941 bottle from Missoula, MT, but that's the only one not of the four cities listed above. I suspect this is because those cities were all major ports used during the war.

The other 9 out of 10 bottles are all the clear "wartime" coke bottles specially manufactured for US troops overseas. 4 of those 9 are 1944 PAT-D types, the rest are all 1945 embossed only with "TRADE MARK". Most have no embossing on the base; some have a letter only or a number.

I'd love to find a couple Hawaiian coke bottles!

I need to get back out there this weekend; I recall stumbling across an area where there might be older bottles. I found an old San Miguel bottle that I can only date to the teens, and an un-embossed turn mold bottle which may be older. I'm hoping there might be more if I scratch the surface a little. I'll take photos!