THE THREE RIVERS PART TWO! Well we're back on the Three Rivers again and I was sure that we would find lots of
golf balls this time and maybe if we were real lucky a few bottles???????, That would be a change! The next week we headed back to the Fort only this time we put in at the place we had chosen for a
pick-up point last time. Rivers flowing all kinds of screwed up directions! So we dropped off my truck at Maumee park and then drove back to Sweeny Park to put the boat in. It was so muddy after the rivers being
up the week before that before we got the boat on the river me and Rick had both been up about to our knees in the muck. It was about 8a.m. Sunday morning and we were ready to kick some bottles up. The river had dropped
8-10 feet in a week and debris was scattered everywhere. We had only went about 50 feet when we seen bottles on the other side of the river so we rowed over parked and proceeded to collect several painted sodas. Painted
sodas are neat but I like really old bottles not early 1900's. We proceeded to go down the river and also to notice that this was absolutely the most god awful filthiest stinking sewage pit of a river that we had ever seen or
smelled. We seen sinks, bathtubs, toilets, phone booths, paper machines, motorcycles, cars, refrigerators, tv's, bicycles and at least 500 large furnishing items within the first three miles. I'm sorry but the only
thing that went through my head the whole time was what did this place look like a hundred years ago????? It was sad and it kind of killed the mood!!!!!!!! We hit a spot by one of the several bridges
where we found a couple of medicine bottles early 1900's. Then we went by the old fort and found a few spots that had lotso'oldbrokenglass on the surface but gave up nothing that was whole. "Toxic Geese" About a couple of miles further down the river we came into an interesting bend by a bicycle trail that was partly in the woods and dirt and partly
suspended on wooden trails. There was one helluva gaggle of geese in the river when we approached and I'm a big waterfowl hunter so when I mentioned that we could cook up some nice roasted goose on the bank Rick commented
that if the geese had been drinking or eating anything within 5 miles of this river we would probably break out in huge nasty pustual boils within five minutes??????....................., WELL~! I think I agree! "Torpedoes" A note of experience here that I would like to share is that when doing river searches is to always watch the large side of a bend as everything
seems to wash to the outside of the curves. We pulled up on the side of the bank where the geese were (the inside and found absolutely nothing). As we shoved off again I was watching the other side which was a very low
and very large sandy beach area. I thought that I was seeing glass so we pulled up and started the search. I found a couple of nice painted sodas going downriver and my brother found a nice milk bottle going upriver.
As we were heading back to the boat each from opposite directions My brother yelled and let me know that he had found the milk. I was still looking around and happened to look down by my feet and seen the side of a
blop top sticking out of the sand. I looked up and yelled at my brother and yelled "Yeah well what about a??????????.............", I looked back down again to re-examine the bottle and realized that it had a
rounded bottom, hmmmmm!!!!!! "A torpedo soda!", "yeah right!", my brother responded. "NO SERIOUSLY!"...... by this time Rick was almost to me and reached down and pulled a beatiful
("NO NAME", "DAMNIT") Torpedo soda out of the sand. Nicest bottle that we'd found all year so we were both happy!
"DAMN DAM DAM DAM Again@!@!@#!$!@$!@$!@$!@$!$" Well It was time to get jiggy' wit' da' dam' again!!!!!!!! I took about another half hour to get around the dam and
the water was really low this time but once again all of the bottles were broken!!!!!! It was several miles and much slower going buy we found the place that we had found on the last float only about 10 foot lower down the
bank and there was ancient pieces everywhere!!!!!!! This is going to stop again now as I am going to make the next story about this location. We had dug this spot years before and we some of the last to dig it.
Just as a teaser when we dug this place before we had pulled out over 5000 bottles including bottles dug by myself being the S.S. Newtons 1876 and The Shoe Figural and the civil war era William H. Hutchinson soda bottle. I'll
hopefully get to update this site into one of the top sites in the next 2 months or so but we are expecting to do a big dig with Scott and Dan of
Scotts Privy Page
in Lagro on my birthday on March 28. Till then enjoy Scotts and others pages on the Bottle ring and check out the pic of my old site! to be continued.... I'M BACK!
Ok back to the story. About fifteen years ago a guy in Fort Wayne found a very large very old city dump along the Maumee river. the majority of the dump had been
burned but he hit into a large filled ravine that hadn't been burnt. This large ravine contained over 150 historical flasks plus numerous other incredible finds (all i've heard are the stories). The rest of the dump
was picked over for a few years but because of the condition of the bottles due to burning it was never hit that hard. About eight years ago my dad found the dump and started doing some serious digging finding a few unburned
spots so we started digging. There were me my brothers Rick and JR. my dad and a friend of my dads digging. we dug the spot for about a month before they closed it off and by this time it looked as if a major
construction crew had moved about 500 tons of earth. What we had found was that if you went below river level the stuff wasn't burnt and we loaded up finding like I said before around 5000 bottles total. Lots of common
stuff but several nice unusual pieces. This time when me and Rick started looking we didn't find much because the river was still somewhat high compared to what it had been when we originally dug it but probing
uprooted a few marbles and we found a small ravine with a few nice inks, blop tops, medicines and one celery compound. The pieces of glass on the ground were what were sickening. I was picking up bottoms of cobalt blue
open pontiled historical flasks etc..... I would have loved to have been the first to this site. Well we spent a little while here and then went on down the river. Just a small ways down I found a
nice pickle bottle in the roots of a tree. We seen a few other spots that looked kind of promising on our way to Maumee Park but it was getting late and we had a storm heading in so we rowed our butts off and went home.
Next story will be the three rivers part three (the final chapter)! Adventures on the Mighty Blue The Three Rivers Part One RETURN TO THE HISTORICAL BOTTLEDIGGERS OF INDIANA HOME
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