P.S. In case anybody is wondering about the legal aspect of finding and keeping Indian artifacts on public ground, I wish to point out that the three manos we found were left at the encampment and buried in a spot that I alone know the location of. Even the two friends that were with me didn't see exactly where I hid them. But apparently this rule doesn't apply to the park rangers because some of the artifacts they have found are now on display in their office museum. As for the beer and other types of bottles and cans are concerned, they are considered unsightly trash and even encouraged by the park rangers to clean up and dispose of.
I was out and about yesterday and stopped by the old Buckman Springs bottling plant to see if the recent rains had unearthed anything. As you will see in the pictures below there is a ditch that runs along the entire length of the property where they used to dump their broken bottles. This is where I found the broken amber bottle I posted a picture earlier and keep hoping that someday I will find an intact example. But unfortunately yesterday wasn't to be that day and, as usual, I walked away again with nothing more than a handful of broken shards. But even the shards are kind of cool and I have decided to start gathering up as many different base fragments as I can find and see if I can put together some kind of chronology as to what all was bottled there. I have some samples soaking in water now and will post pictures of them once they are cleaned up. 1. View of the ditch with the old house in the background.2. Close-up of one of the dump piles.3. Section of old ceramic pipe that fed lithia water from the spring to the bottling plant.
While I was out yesterday I also took this picture of Dead Indian mountain to give you a better idea of how it looks close up. I added the wooden cigar store Indian to illustrate the mountain's profile.
I would like to emphasize that no disrespect is intended toward Native Americans by calling the landmark "Dead Indian Mountain." That nickname has been used for as long as I can recall and originated by the areas first settlers. The mountain's geographical name is "Cameron Mountain" and was named after the Cameron family who settled in the area in the 1870s. The mountain's summit elevation is 3,952 feet as seen in this 1956 topographical map ...
If you find the Wilshire Club in a cone top let me know. It's tough as a soda cone top & came in at least 5 different flavors in the can. Pic of mine below. LEON.
Leon I come across cone-top cans from time to time during my soda bottle hunts but every one of them was so rusted that they are unidentifiable. However, I did find five different varieties of the Wilshire Club cans on gono.com, with one of them pictured below. Here's the link which shows the other ones ... http://gono.com/v-tours/sodacone/scone43wclub.htm Of the two Wilshire Club bottles I found at the lake, I gave one of them to the rangers to display in their little museum. As it turns out, they said it was the best preserved soda bottle found so far, which I thought was totally cool. [] Joy Flavor / Orange ?
We had a 100 acre fire today that started about two miles north of the old Buckman Springs bottling plant. The east winds, called Santa Ana's, were blowing in from the Desert at about 50 mph and whipped the fire into a frenzy. But thankfully to the firefighters and airplanes that drop fire retardants, they now have the fire under control. At one point they closed the highway, but that occurred after I drove up there and took the attached pictures. If you compare them to the others I posted previously, you should recognize the location. I'm glad my bottle digging grounds didn't get burned, but it came pretty close. Had the fire continued to spread to the west another five miles it would have reached Lake Morena.
When I took this picture the fire was just beyond the ridge about a half-mile away and headed straight for me. They closed the highway about a half-hour later ... [&:] ... but I heard afterwards that it never reached the road.