# Ottawa Bottle Dump



## dominionator (Aug 2, 2011)

Greetings all!

 I am an insulator collector from Ottawa ON and have recently done some dump digging in the area mainly to find insulators, but the bottles are starting to catch on...

 Anyhow, I've been mucking around for the past 3 years on and off in a dump that is located in the downtown core. I was wondering if other diggers from the Ottawa area have worked this dump. It's on NCC property, and you can park about 50 feet from it in a nice shady area. Know where I mean? 

 It is in a ravine that is partly man-made. Originally there was a wider channel here and it was narrowed around 1901 or so. Much of the material used in the channel is garbage from around that time. Unfortunately I have turned up shards on the surface. There are remnants of literally thousands of bottles mixed with utility poles, cables, old metal gas tanks, concrete, bricks etc. If you are familiar with this dump, is it worth digging, or is everything just shards here?

 I will post pictures later on. I have found sodas, beer, posion, glass jugs, gingers, you name it! Some of the cork tops have mould lines over the tops, much of the glass is aqua  or coloured, heavily mineralized in many cases. I think I have also turned up the bottom of a torpedo bottle.

 And for the insulator collectors, I have turned up the following:

 Broken Brookfield 162's
 10 CD31 ESB Co. Battery Rests in Emerald Green, all broken to some degree
 Parts of 157's and 159's
 Lots of porcelain cleats

 Happy hunting!

 Chris


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## canada (Aug 2, 2011)

Hello;

 I am in Ottawa, have dug at most of the known dumps in the city. Not sure if I know the spot you describe, but sounds similar to a well-known site, circa 1920, 
 on the Rideau River.
 Watch out for the NCC  make-believe cops, we were given written warnings & told a large fine would be next, ''for disturbing the flora & fauna''. This in a rubble-filled area not used by the public, where we were carefully filling our holes.
 Good luck wherever you are digging, look out for Ottawa gingerbeers!

   Dave












  along the Rideau River


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## dominionator (Aug 2, 2011)

Dave, this site is NOT along the Rideau River, but it IS along the Ottawa River not far from Booth Street. I think it has been documented already as a place to find historic things, but maybe not in the bottle digging community. Maybe we can swap info on dump sites


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## dominionator (Aug 2, 2011)

Today's shards, Part 1:

 -A bottle top with a metal cap, squeezed on, not screwed, with an intact porcelain valve.
 -Part of a Gurd's Ginger bottle
 -Base of a bottle embossed 
 -Roundish base of a very small green bottle


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## dominionator (Aug 2, 2011)

Today's shards, Part2:

 Various bottle tops...


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## dominionator (Aug 2, 2011)

Today's Shards, Part 3:

 -Bottom front of a bottle with part of "Carleton Place Ont" visible
 -Base with a 3 leaf clover embossing
 -Bottom front of an unknown embossed bottle
 -Base of a light amethyst bottle


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## dominionator (Aug 2, 2011)

Today's Shards, Part 4:

 Upper left- possible torpedo bottle base. Mould line visible on convex side, not on concave side
 Upper centre-thick bottomed green bottle base
 Upper Right- blue bottle with "OCK" "OD" and "S" visible
 Lower left- part of a big jug/planter/?? in milk glass or opalescent glass, hole is drilled along left edge of shard
 Bottom right- bottom of something BIG! About 10" diam, 1" thick in the centre, has tool marks and large bubbles.


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## CanadianBottles (Apr 24, 2016)

Hey Dominionator, are you still around?  Probably not since you haven't posted in four years, but if you are, did you ever do any digging at this spot?  I was just wandering around there the other day and it looked surprisingly un-dug.  I don't plan on doing any digging there because I don't want to get on the bad side of the NCC, but I'm quite curious about this spot.  It seems like it should have been dug by everyone and their grandmother because it's so blatantly obvious, but I didn't see any signs of serious digging there.


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## RCO (Apr 25, 2016)

did he ever find anything not broken at the site ? still some interesting shards if nothing else . I'd imagine if anything not broken was there it be well hidden and under the broken bottles .


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## CanadianBottles (Apr 26, 2016)

This place is just packed with stuff like that, but there was almost nothing even close to whole.  It's the only turn of the century dump I've ever seen where in some places the ground is literally just glass, no dirt, and it's all shards like that.  Lots of tantalizing pieces of locals and semi-locals.  Of course the only intact piece I was able to find was one of those little white glass face cream jars, which every dump has at least one of.  One of these days I might go back with gloves and have a better look through the shards to see what's there.  I was hesitant to pick too much up with my bare hands.


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## sunrunner (Apr 26, 2016)

sounds like a glass house dump .shards for cullet.


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## RCO (Apr 28, 2016)

CanadianBottles said:


> This place is just packed with stuff like that, but there was almost nothing even close to whole.  It's the only turn of the century dump I've ever seen where in some places the ground is literally just glass, no dirt, and it's all shards like that.  Lots of tantalizing pieces of locals and semi-locals.  Of course the only intact piece I was able to find was one of those little white glass face cream jars, which every dump has at least one of.  One of these days I might go back with gloves and have a better look through the shards to see what's there.  I was hesitant to pick too much up with my bare hands.



does sound like an odd dump , being so close to the downtown it must of all came from a business or city dumped it there years ago . there must of been a lot of bottles broken in downtown Ottawa and somehow they ended up there . 

the shards still would be interesting to look at , you can learn a lot from them , and many of the smaller pieces its possible to identify what bottle they were if some parts remain but doubtful is a whole one there


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## CanadianBottles (Apr 30, 2016)

I don't think it's a glasshouse dump, because I'm pretty sure Ottawa didn't have a glasshouse in the early 20th century, and there definitely wasn't a glasshouse there.  I think a lot of it was fill.  The section that's all beverage bottles may have been from the workers in the area throwing parties, though it's a bit odd that there are a lot of non-Ottawa bottles there.  It might have been a tavern dump.


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