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Wow, that is so cool! Good luck with the bottles, hope you get lots of good ones. Nice of you to let her use your detector, too. It's nice to have a win-win. Curt

Post a few pics too if you can.

Good luck and HH

Looking forward to the results of your hunt! Let us know how the lady enjoys her first MDing, too.

That is very cool. Keep us posted and takes pictures.

Keep us posted on the results!

the spot is nice. quite a long creek. One side is swampy and deep mud. The side we were on is firm and good for walking. The only bad thing is the foliage came up to our thighs.

The owner came over on his tractor and told us that before the foliage grows in the spring, it's bottle city as far as you can see...He also pointed out the flat area above the slope next to us and told us that the spot was the original hotel for the area. We didnt have a scythe or a weedwhacker with us and I wasn't going to cut brush for 12hrs just to see the ground.

Near the bottom of the slope up to the hotel I found a big hunk of 4" clay sewer. next to the hill were some stone pylons (4' high x 5' wide) with a 1/2 circle cut into the center. Figured the privy must be up there somewhere. Climbed the hill and found it right on the back corner of the lot. 8x12' brick and mortar cap on top of stone. didn't have a prybar or sledge (we figured we'd be walking a creek picking bottles out of the bank) so dug next to it til we were under the cap. Found some glass shards and hunks of wood.

Hopefully that means a wood lining. Buried against a hill on the other side of the lot we found a square cement sleeve that's 2'-3' deep and a cap that had fallen off of it.

Going back Saturday with a scythe, battery powered weed whacker and a sledgehammer and a prybar. going to either rip that privy cap apart and start digging, or just whack some grass down to a manageable size...

these pics are of the privy (we managed to pry the very top layer off...) The other pics are of the sleeve and cap. There are shiny glass pieces in there that we saw with a flashlight, so might be promising.

looks like a good spot

keep us updated with finds and pics..GL and HH.....cliff.

ok, I'm jealous

awesome find!

If you find colored whiskey bottles or "Bitters"bottles those can be worth huge amounts of money! I recommend a bottle book with values! Good digging to you!

Hey all. Little update. Not much of one though. That place was vegetation city. Took 3hrs just to whack a path a few feet wide with the scythe. Friend forgot his weed whacker. Go figure.
Found a bunch of '30's-'40's leave behinds that we threw away to help clear it out and an older med bottle. Asked the owner (again) where all the bottles were at and he said they were all along the creek edge. We pulled some good shards from the lip of the creek and in the bottom of the creek (had a come along in the truck) but we weren't in waders etc.. for water digging. The water is only a few feet deep and the mud is roughly 1' deep.

Can't go back for a couple of weeks, unless I can convince wife to bring me there while she's off on Friday... (going to wife's family farm for a week and will be digging/md'ing up there). Also found a dump that was filled with dense brush. Found some tin, car parts and a bunch of misc... didn't pull that out either because it was so dense. Going to have to bring the chainsaw in there.

We hammered the stone at the privy site with the sledge hammers and dug down a bit and pulled some nice embossed shards and larger pieces of wood lining.

Basically turned out to be a "prep" trip. Cut some grass, probe around the creek edge and the privy area. (that privy has gotta be pretty deep) Cpl weeks when we go back we should be able to get down to the real digging.

Now that it's semi-cleared I'll get some pics next time we go.

How great of them to share that info with you, and for you to get her started with a detector....win-win. Keep the updates coming and good luck.

Great to hear, keep up posted that was interesting

Great opportunity! Looking forward to the updates. Good luck.

small update before tomorrow's dig....

Since we didn't find !!!! for bottles on the edge or on the flat area next to the creek, I have a theory...

the creek is not a running creek. it's marshy at very shallow at one end and near where we walk in, it's roughly 1' water, 1' mud. The bank is like drying mud. Safe to walk in, but still a bit squishy. about 20' away from where we stand when we enter is a hand made stone culvert. The water doesn't go as high as the culvert.

The junk pile we found near the very low marshy end is what I believe to be the bunkhouse. I have a pic I'll post. It's a bunkhouse behind the hotel...which would be about right for placement.

he said that before the foliage comes in, it's glass as far as you can see....but when the foliage is up, you can't see much...

we found that out even after i hacked the grass down to the dirt.

my 2 theories:
the ground was muddy during the thaw and the spring runoff is what caused the bank to become mud and the bottles sank (not thinking hundreds of bottles sank in the bank though) and the ground firmed up a bit, thereby covering them...

2nd theory and best one methinks:

when the thaw started, he was in there and saw the bottles lying on the dried out creekbed. The runoff came and filled the creek burying them under that 1' of water and 1' of mud. The creek bed could be similar to the bank in that they both were mud-like and the water just happens to sit in the creek bed because it's a lower point.....

because we scoured that area and didn't find one single bottle older than 1930's....

so either the bottles are under where we walk, or right on the bank edge where we walk...or they're between the bank and other side sitting on the bottom of the creek bed. Or...they're at the end of the marshy shallow area where we found the dump looking spot...

either way, I'll know tomorrow. Bringing waders, shovels, a come along on a normal shovel handle and my roof rake. roof rake will be used as a come along for stuff further away. Plus you can take the handle apart and you end up with a nice long metal probe so you can wait to hear that nice ping sound...

they have to be in the water or under the lip of the bank buried or something.....

Since it's not a running creek, more like a stagnant runoff creek shaped pool, i'm either going to put a v-dam in, an earth dam or i'm going to dig a trench with a pool and 90degree it off to another pool to drain it a bit. make it easier to get in there...

Theories anyone? Cause this has been going through my mind nonstop since we were last there and the thought of them being in the creek really hit...

the 3 pics. (i've probably posted these and ranted about this before..so forgive me if i'm repeating)..

house on left is at a corner no longer there, next to that is the commons house (where this guy lives now...house is gone, his small ranch is on the property) and the hotel is just past the commons... the bldg across the street is the lumberstore..

bicyclists...they're semi in front of the lumber store and they'd be facing the house that leads to the house on the corner...

3rd pic is the bunkhouse behind the hotel. If this bunkhouse turned into the pile/remnants we found (we did find some tin ceiling pieces), there might be some goodness in there too...

the street that they all face is now hwy m95...

Nice place you found.

You may want to consider going back in the spring, when mother nature has done the cleaning of the weed, and make a mental note as to where you find the goodies.

Metal detecting such an area is also easier, since the grass and weed will be much lower....

The downside to that approach is that the creek you mentioned could be full of water....

it sounds like you have found a very good spot to search.

GL.

/Steffen

Wow that is a lot of bicycles and expensive clothing, 19th century yuppies liked to carry lots of Seated halfs, fact.

Hi - years ago I lived by a small creek , never saw anything , Well one spring we had very heavy rains for days , the banks got mushy alot of silt washed away - When I went back , the sides of the bank looked like BOTTLE CITY , found out later that the creek banks had been used as a bottle dump and they would hold the bank back , You just have to wait natures course

i agree...we're going to wait until at least late summer/fall to go. It gets cold here late summer.

When we were there yesterday we found a bunch of 1920's-1940's bottles. Even 2 rare sodas. a Lovit from Dexter Co. Minneapolis and a semi-ultra-rare Arola's. Arola was a company from Republic, Michigan. I had one of their other acl style bottles and sold that to a friend who collects them for almost 100. At friend pricing. Found a few prohibition bottles and a Linco bleach bottle...that was nice, since i've always found Clorox. Found some very thick Cobalt shards...that's a good sign.

Had some solid bottle "pings" from using the oversized metal probe.

Just so much buried brush and log hunks to clear out in that creek.
Better to wait until late fall/spring. Either that or just go dig the banks like crazy. Because under the 2-3" of semi-solid mud, it's squishy and watered mud.

We knew we weren't going to be able to spend all day digging scrub out of the creek so we could wade in safely and start probing, so we made our way back to the dump we had seen. We found old horseshoes, huge pieces of tin roofing and misc. metal. We cleared that all out and were surprised to see a decent sized hole (5-8' across) filled with dirt and handsized rocks and bricks.(some of the bricks had crude company names engraved into them) looks and feels lik a liner for a privy. We started peeling those rocks and bricks out. After clearing the first layer, I was able to get my arm into the dirt shoulder deep before hitting more of what felt like a formed wall of stone and brick mix. This dump is in the right spot for the bunkhouse, so we're figuring this was the privy and the bldg collapsed or they knocked it over onto the privy...Whatever it is, it's a decently wide, deep looking hole.

heading back in a couple of weeks to see if the ground dries out a bit (we've had huge rain storms the last couple of weeks, would like to see the creek dry back out a bit). We are definitely digging in that hole in 2wks when we go back up....

I'll get pics up later when I organize them.

Milhaus-sadly they are facing what now is m95 hwy and they are stopped at a now defunct road that's owned by someone else...

didn't make it to inlaws this weekend to try out the new 2box detector, so we're going to hit the creek/hole again....

Going to focus on digging the hole at the pile of tin/metal we hit. One more thing that leads me to believe it's the bunkhouse pushed over the privy are the coffee pots we found. Found 2 granitewear/chuck wagon style coffee pots. Right next to the hole we found on top of a piece of ceiling tin. So going to dig in that hole and clear the bricks/stones out...

And taking a diff approach to the creek. Going to rake up the mud on the bottom right up against the bank and see whats there.... Mostly concentrate on the hole though. Looks like a privy, shaped like a privy, hopefully when we dig down it is a privy....