The Old Homestead Bottle Dump

[misswired]

The homestead dump was for all the non-burnable garbage, before garbage pick-up.... glassware is usually the only survivors, hence the bottle dump name. The garbage dump was usually within 50yards or so from the house...... after all, she didn't want to haul the garbage too far. Here's a pic of three prize snuff glasses found in this homesteads old dump.

I found the brown women's medicine bottle bout twenty years ago when the railroad disturbed the area around what used to be a water tank station for the old steam engines.

To find the old geezers liquor bottles....you'll have to find the old outhouse location and dig it out. They didn't discard the empty liquor bottles in the common garbage dump for the wife to see.

I need to scratch around with the rake some more.....I know the lady of the house dipped more than three jars of snuff

 

[BearBio]

Be VERY careful!! In certain parts of the San Joaquin Valley, they burned garbage and the glass and metal remained. They used sludge from the oil fields. It contained carcinogenic waste and heavy metals. These were deposited on the glass. Lots (and I mean lots) of people illegally digging on BLM land have developed cancer. The small towns (such as Taft and Oildale) have high rates of cancer.

 

[sureshotbob]

My house was built in 1911 . My property has woods on 3 sides and a large slope at the back. There is a large boulder in the back of my garage that was used as a bottle dump.

I've raked up all kind's of bottle's from that area but now it's so overgrown with poison ivy I just leave it alone. A drinker must of lived here at some time as I've found lot's of alcohol bottle's plus the colored medicine bottle's.

 

[Ivan the Butcher]

When we bought the first farm outside Harlem in 1965, the farm dump was 250 yards behind the barn. Just inside the wood line. There was the edge of a ridge so the trash rolled downhill 75 yards or so. The cans from the 1920's were almost gone, but metal cans and bottle lids from the depression were still good. There was nothing recognizable from WWII. But the 50's trash was almost like new!

My best friend would dig the abandoned church's outhouses for whiskey bottles! The women's outhouse is always fruitless, but a lot of really nice half pint bottles come from the men's john! (Must have been from weddings and ice cream socials & such!) The men's outhouses from county courthouses are pretty rich digging too! (don't let the Judge catch you drinking in his courtroom!) I never found the farm dump on my farm north of Harlem! The township dump was a mile down the road in a old borrow pit for the brick kiln! The EPA close that down in 1970 or so!

Ivan

 

[mauser9]

Sound like good spots to expend some .22 ammo.

 

[Glashaus]

I lived on a farm that had been in my family since the 1820's and there was a spot that was the old family dump, lots of bottles and broken dishes and clay pieces. There was another spot for metal trash, everything else was burned.