Many people in search of "SeaGlass" at Glass Beach, do not realize it was a dump!!
As always, interesting comments there Buriedtreasuretime. I guess making it a state park with a prohibition on gathering is like killing two birds with one stone. Very cool and great for humans but I wonder about the glass' effect on the sealife?... --Len,CT
So true about the plastics! --I believe the beach is where the Phoenicians first made their glass.
--CT Len
Glass is made from silica, that’s what the beach sand is sorta.
So true about the plastics! --I believe the beach is where the Phoenicians first made their glass.
--CT Len
Kudos on your ethical practices. I've never been a privy pit digger myself because I'm not cut out to knock on doors seeking permission to dig. However, I have often cringed when viewing privy digger videos to see the diggers shoveling great piles of glass and pottery shards back into the hole. It would take little additional effort during the dig to sift all the material taken from a pit, which would retrieve small items like marbles and coins in the process, then return nothing but the screened soil to the pit. Also, if tamped lightly, screened soil will refill the hole more effectively, with less subsequent settling, than a mix that includes large curved shards of hard material.
Since the majority of my digs in the early 1970's were in rural wooded locations and comprised mostly surface dumps, including some that were extensive scatters of crumbling tin cans and other debris, I don't feel too guilty about my youthful and less considered attitude at the time. Indeed, at least one of the sites that I dug has since been made into a public trail and park with interpretive signs that tell of the late 19th century railroad and logging activities which took place there. Conceivably, some items I left behind now add to hikers' experience of "olden times." I do wish though, that I had carted off at least one each of the innumerable old relic saws, both circular "head rigs" and the two-man crosscuts that had been discarded all along, and still littered, the banks of the RR grade when I visited in 1971.
Too, I have often regretted not keeping more glass shards. With the idea of incorporating the pieces into such craft projects as epoxy table tops with embedded shards of recognizable embossed brands of bitters, whiskey and other bottles, I did start saving some of my more interesting pieces later on. I love what you are doing in donating pieces to artists and crafts people. I hope more bottle diggers adopt your practices.
If you lived in California, I have two of those two person logging saws. One is really old and the other is maybe from the 40’s. Bought them up in Reno 15 years back- they just sit in n my basement, I’d give them to ya free but you’d have to pick them up. I never did have a good place to put them. I love old iron relics, somewhere I think I have some giant ice tongs for harvesting and carrying large blocks of ice for the old original ice box coolers before modern refrigeration. That stuff all told such great tales.)
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Although I grew up in So Cal--my late father, a PA farm boy, went to work in the Kaiser Steel plant in Fontana after returning from World War Two--I've lived most of my adult life in the PNW. That said, I'd like to take you up on your generous offer if you are not in too much a hurry to clear your basement. I have to make multiple trips to and through CA this year to retrieve industrial goods and government surplus items that I have won at auction and that are languishing in storage in the Bay area and down at Yermo.
Let me know where you are located if that sounds okay to you. I might work a visit to the Cerro Gordo ghost town (near Death Valley) into one of the trips. I'm working on trading some water delivery (one of the items I need to retrieve from Yermo is an Oshkosh P-19 firetruck) for a tour of the site and a night or two camping there. Not sure the deal will fly--they communicated interest--but if it does, are you interested in going along?