Old time Diggers

[GuntherHess]

I would agree with Chris , the biggest difference now is everyone is scared to death of law suits and its harder to get permission to dig anywhere. We used to dig in some great sites on Federal land but now if they catch you now, you get a jail sentence worse than a cocaine dealer. Obviously there are less sites out there but still plenty of places to dig.

 

[madpaddla]

Then to now. The then had first hand knowledge of dumps and yes the bottles were and still can be found on top just not as easily. In the 70's this place was pounded. Every train tressle, abandoned road, mill, hell...under the chicken coops....all was dug. The technique wasn't as good but the bottles were abit easier to find. And the common ones then aren't the common ones now.
The now. Internet has made the playing field abit more even. Including this forum, ebay, the mutliple sites (US Govt., kovels.com, glass makers marks, etc) provide such a wealth of information that was alot harder to get back in the 70's. There is a map in a local townhall that dates from the 1870's and shows property owners etc. NO way could you get a photo copy of that back in the 1970's. The librarian rode a broom. haha But now its on ebay for $21.
My want and wish is to see/visit with an "old timer" and for him to pull out pontil after pontil. And to hear the stories first hand. Its just nice to talk with someone that has been there. Ben

 

[Road Dog]

I was diggin in the early 70's. I wish I could go back. I left some finds there that today I wish I had. DOH!

 

[deepwoods]

Speaking of digging on Federal Land, I remember an article in Old Bottle Magazine about guys that used to dig regularly at a dump on West Point property. Apparently it was a great, deep, and quite hazardous, dump to to dig in, but alot of the stuff in the oldest part was pre-civil war. The guys quoted in the article said they used to dig there almost every weekend and always find more stuff than they could carry out. Needless to say, the place is off-limits now.

 

[KentOhio]

I've heard legends from an old-time digger that there's a killer dump in my area that was only partly dug in the 70's. How killer? Threadless telegraph insulator and amber pontiled fruit jar killer. He says the diggers dug so many craters it looked like a mine field, and then they were all banned and the site was off-limits. But he tells me that there are a lot of areas in-between the craters that weren't touched. Probably whoever owns the land now doesn't know the story. We're going to try to get permission and dig there soon.

 

[Caretaker maine]

I like talking to old deer hunters, around the time deer hunting starts you see them all around, I don't hunt animals, only bottles[], they are a great resourse for cellar holes, and where there is cellar holes there's usally a dumpbordering on being an oldtimer my self, a shade of 50, I find it easy to talk to them and they like to talk, I wish I could find a good coffee shop that all the townies stop in and shoot the breeze, it's a good source for some leads too, where I use to live in NH, the old time metal detectors told me they would dig silver dollars every time they went out, never believed they til I went over there homes and saw their collections, but there is plenty more out there, it's just harder to find.

 

[downeastdigger]

Hi JD ( and others )
I was surfing the net for bottle digging articles and sites, and came across this cool one and it reminded me of this post from a couple of weeks ago. Hopefully you can link to it. Talk about great digging! He's retelling a story from 1969, but still has the awesome bottles he dug from then. Enjoy.

Hmm, I cant transfer the link, I'll have to do it by hand in the next post

 

[downeastdigger]

http://members.tripod.com/waipahuHaole1/SanFranciscoprivy.html

 

[bearswede]

Nice, Bram! Thanks for sharing!!!


Ron

 

[capsoda]

Cool site Bram. I was diggin in the 60s and dug alot of nice bottles too. A dam broke a little ways from my parents home and the lake was a mill pond in the early to mid 1800s. The bottom was full of all kind of bottles. I didn't keep many embossed bottles, unless the bottom was weird, because I had seen them before. I kept the ones with the little broke of thing on the bottom and the rusty bottom ones only.

When I went into the Air Force I gave most of them away because I didn't know the AF would move them for me.

The area I'm in was beeing dug in the 50s alittle buy a retired Navy guy who has now passed. Digging picked up in the 60s but while I was gone in the AF during the 70s and 80s there was a lot of building of interstate hwys and large buildings down town. Digging boomed, some careles diggers got involved, some scroupuless diggers got involved and since the area was settled 400 years ago the archy and historical types got involved and digging was all but shut down.Got real tough after that but we dug. Two of the people involved in causing the shut down are now in prison. A digger without morals and an archy who stole artifacts and bottles and sold them on Ebay.

There is still alot to dig out there and some of it is very old but you have to work at it. I know of three honey holes, two that are downtown that I can't get permission to dig because it is my falt New Orleans sank,[8|], And one you can only get to by boat which I plan on hitting hard this fall after it cools down. It's out there, go get it.