identifying trash dump sites??

[GarrettS]

anyone got any advice on how to locate trash dumps for ghost towns?
did the people in town have a certain location for everyones trash to go or was it each house had its own pile?
at times when ive gone to these old towns i find what appears to be a small crater in the ground and then around this crater are lots of broken glass and other small bits of metal, i get thrown for a loop whenever i see these because i am not sure what i am looking at and what its telling me.
Another thing that pisses me off is all this purple and aqua blue glass but you can never find a fully intacked bottle lying around.

Anyways help appreciated

 

[Canewrap]

If you want intact bottles, you're gonna have to find the outhouse pits and for that you'll need a probe (long metal rod with a T handle welded on or wood handle glued on). The probe will allow you find the deep soft spots that usually indicate a filled in pit. As for where to start probing, you'll either have to get a rough layout of the town through research or do enough on ground surveying to figure out where the foundations were and go from there.

While trash pits will have some intact bottles, a large percentage will be broken. If you can find a privy it will usually be loaded with goodies and you don't have to worry about 100+ year-old waste, it'll be safe to dig in. Just be sure to use waterproof gloves so as to keep the smell off of you. I dug a dozen privies in downtown Wilmington, DE when I was an Archie back in the 80s and if I had been doing it for myself I would have one heckuva collection of goodies now.

 

[Nancy-IL]

Interesting......My mom has a couple privies that we might have to crack open. Seriously, we've got her permission and it was quite a booming town in the late 1800's and early 1900's. Knowing her, she might be there helping us dig. She's a young 79 yrs. and also uses a Ace 250 that we got her. I remember my dad saying that some guy kept begging him to dig out the old privy and dad wouldn't let him. Many many silver coins have come out of that small town and my parents home was the second to the oldest in town before tearing it down and building a new one. SWEET! OK, We'll have to do it..............next year!

And we've found that most private homes had their own pile of trash in the back corner of the yard. Many times we've come across this in the old homes. Lots of junk, but fun to find a thimble, etc. here and there. HH, Nancy