# Eastern PA, Berks/Lehigh/Schuylkill area



## PibbleMama (Jul 17, 2016)

Hello all, I'm new to the forum and overall new to the bottle digging scene. I've always been a history buff, love vintage and antiques, have a huge fascination for old glass. After 10 years of being together, smack him upside the head, my husband finally figured out the latter part and says to me one day a few weeks ago, "Oh, you like that stuff? I know a spot in the woods where there's glass bottles everywhere!" So he takes me up to his hunting spot and sure enough, it's an old farm dump. Hellooooo newfound addiction! It's a treasure hunt!

Fast forward to a few weeks later, I don't know that we've exhausted the site, but he's called a halt to our adventures due to not wanting to disturb the deer any more than we already have. Hunting season is just around the corner and we need the meat to fill our freezer for the year.

That said, I'm sitting here twitching, especially after going to our first bottle show yesterday and seeing all the cool stuff people have found. The things we've found at our site mostly have been nothing special. Way too many ketchup bottles, baby food jars, medicine bottles, so many broken mason jars I could cry (a broken SCA one!!), and lots of tops to gallon and half gallon jugs, ouch. You name it, we probably found broken pieces. But since you just never know what you might find, I want to keep on searching. I love a good treasure hunt. 

What I'm looking for, well we because hubby is pretty into it to (and so are the kids to a point), is someone to give us some pointers with this, maybe help us find some new sites or point us in the direction of finding sites, accompany us if you don't mind tons of questions! 

If anyone out there is interesting in helping us out, shoot me a PM. We're in the Berks County area, willing to travel. 

Thanks!
~Kate~


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## jk666 (Jul 17, 2016)

I too am newly addicted. The farm dump I've been digging is huge and I manage to find something new every time I go back. Not being greedy, I'm trying to not take every whole bottle on the ground, just examples I don't already have. 

As as for find in new sites, word of mouth from others who walk in the woods (hunters, hikers, dog walkers) is always good. In my experience I'd suggest following stone walls as people tended to dump at the property lines. I've been looking at 1880s maps to see if any old houses existed in public areas that are easily accessible today.

Have fun!


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## PibbleMama (Jul 17, 2016)

Where's the best place to find maps, libraries or historical societies? Thanks for that tip! We have been trying to find historical property maps of my parents' place as the original house was built between 1850 and 1870 but so far no luck. If my dad let's us, I'd like to dig there, but I'm not even sure where to start. I thought maybe start out with a metal detector and go from there? They just bought the place two years ago and have done extensive work, so far nothing has been on the surface, but they aren't the first people who have done extensive work on the place either, so any original trash dumps may have long since been cleaned out. The barn held nothing but literal junk and the old shed was collapsed and gone.

The current farm dump we are at is now inside the trees, which way back when was probably the tree line. When we first started, we were hanging onto everything whole as we didn't know what was what. Then as we researched and learned, we started figuring out what to keep and what not to. Plus, the property owner would rather it all be cleaned out anyway and won't allow anyone else back in there. So now we're in a spot where, what do we do with it all? Have definitely found some neat stuff, even of the non-glass variety. An old metal gun, probably a BB gun or a toy gun. A dog tag from WWII (incidentally with my family surname, and this is less than 5 miles from where my family came from, yet the man is not direct relation, distant relative possibly). License plates from the 30s and 40s. Just neat stuff, but of course lots of junk too such as barbed wire, old mattress springs, light bulbs. It's so frustrating finding an intact light bulb next to a broken mason jar/antique bottle! Anyway, task one is remove the good stuff that we want to keep, task two will be the cleanup for the property owner. I'm a crafty person so I'm envisioning what I can do with the common items. I even got ideas for some of the broken pieces yesterday.

My area is so full of old farms, every time we go somewhere, I eye up the places trying to picture where their trash dumps or privvies might have been. I've truly caught the bug! I'll get some pics posted of my neater finds soon.


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## Bob Apples (Jul 17, 2016)

We owe motherearth that much, I clean all the glass from every dump I dig. The iron can go back in at the bottom and cover the dump completely. Leave no broken glass anywhere. Do that a few times and you'll have more dumps than you can dig in a lifetime. I cast the common bottles and broken glass into tile and lighting lenses.


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## jk666 (Jul 18, 2016)

Take a look here for old maps. You can also look at your local county and state .gov sites to see what they have.

http://www.davidrumsey.com


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## PibbleMama (Jul 19, 2016)

Well I'm not having much luck on the maps front, tried a historic maps website which has maps from the 1870s of all the towns around me but apparently none of them wanted to show their town dumps? Not a single map even makes a mention of it. My area doesn't seem to be on the David Rumsey site either. I'm guessing I'm going to have to do good old fashioned leg work to the historical societies. 

However, we do have a lead, a friend has an old farm and said we can explore the property. It's actually his wife's family's property so he didn't grow up there and they don't know of anywhere specific, but an old farm means there's got to be at least one dump site and hopefully a privy, right? So one weekend in the near future, we're going exploring. Here's hoping it's successful!


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## jk666 (Jul 20, 2016)

There are bottle digging blogs and you tube pages with tips. Dumps are not always on maps, but every old 1800s house has some kind of a dump on the property. I believe the rule of thumb is to look downhill and in the corner of the property or by a stream bed. I usually look for where houses used to be that are now public land. 

Don't let anyone tell you that the bottles you're finding are 'worthless.' They may not be worth anything monetarily, but that doesn't take away from the thrill of the hunt or the awe of finding something so fragile that has survived 100 years.


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## jk666 (Jul 20, 2016)

Did you look here?

http://www.phmc.state.pa.us/bah/dam/mg/di/m011/countymapsinterface.htm


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