My story is. I was digging an extension on the side of a walmart and I got a few feet down and I started digging up bags? I was like ***. Turns out I was digging up dead cats and dogs. Back in the 50's till the 70's i guess there was an animal hospital where the walmart was. So i guess they dug a big hole and tossed all the dead animals in there and filled it up. So, when it was discovered rest assure they shut down the whole site and called in the troops and we got shut down for a few days.
not much more than some unknown 50000 volt powerlines :O
Nothing to exciting, beer and whiskey bottles....lit a gas contaminated pit on fire the other day, scared the trucks I was loading.. WHUMP!! lol
old dump body that was turned upside down and used as a septic tank... always fun to find one of those by accident with a tractor pan. There was an old Oldsmobile about 75 feet from that. That's pretty much the most exciting thing I've ever run across or dug up.
a locomotive.
old cans and bottles.
We were cleaning out an old junkyard that you accessed through a nasty little trailer park,(the owner of both had died). I was using a trackhoe to straighten the access road so we could get tractor trailers in and out. I was leveling a bank of loose dirt right in the edge of one of the lots and hit a 2 foot square stainless steel box. As our only pay was what we could scrap, I threw this valuable thing over to my ground man. He commented on the terrible smell before he opened it. When he unsnapped the latches, the first thing he brought out was a very foul-smelling sofa pillow. Next, he got a baby blanket, then a stuffed animal, both stinking to high heaven. There was another stuffed animal and one more baby blanket, when he picked up the second stuffed animal, we commented on how realistic it looked. After a few minutes we realized it was a rotten dog! We had hit somebody's lapdog's grave! We wasted no time in reburying the dog and accessories out of our new road. The last thing I needed was the dog's owners walking out at that moment. We did scrap the box.
Digging a septic system on the south side of Daniel's Lake in Nikiski Alaska. Used to be a Deni'ani Indian fish camp in the area. Dug up a stone knife with the second scoop. Not another artifact the rest of the job, and I was watching like a hawk.
150,000 year old Bison bones!!! Was working for the University of Minnesota at Itasca State Park. ( Headwaters for the Mississippi River). They hired me and a backhoe to dump scoops of dirt into a screening cradle type affair.... I would put a scoop in then they would sift and shake thru it getting the old bones, and some indian artifacts. Was kinda interesting in the beginning but after a week of putting a scoop in every half hour it got old.
A high pressure gas line.
test test
Our backhoe operator found the city water main once. I was in the trench with a cut saw working on a storm water box, and got out to drink some water. When I turned back around the ditch was full with water up to where my head was.
In about 94 I was on a job in Lethbridge Alberta and we found ammonite in our cut. It was everywhere and when it rained (colors really stand out when it's wet) our cut looked like a rainbow. Same job we ran into an old dump. I found an old 5 ton truck in it, pushed it up out of the hole and had fun running it over with the D9.
nothing i have ever dug up has been as fun as the stuff i have buried!!!!!! and I'm not telling.....
I know where their is a bag of golf clubs waiting to be dug up.... I know a dozer operator who burried a set of golf clubs after the job super threw them off of the roof of a shoping center... the plumbers were playing golf on the roof instead of working they thought that hitting the dozer was a good idea, WRONG the super had warned them prior to the burial of their clubs... If you do any work in a old city you will find things. I was on a job where we were looking for nasty stuff thousands of drums were pulled up some containing scary amounts of PCB's
lost treasure we were doing a demo years ago in aspen. the house was real old and had been redone many times. nothing really all that interesting. by the time we got to the concrete i found a door that went to an old crawl space. so i ripped the wall down with the hoe and low and behold.... there is a safe se we get all happy and start hi-fiving each other like we just found the titanic. so we are thinking (the safe is about 2' by 2') ok.. i am the boss and i tell my other hoe hand and laborer so i wll cut you guys in for 25% each and i take 50%....ok..ok..ok.. so i crack it open.. now there is a small crowd gathered.. kinda hard to divy up a $25.00 b.s. necklace three ways. it was fun though i would like to hear how the h.p. gas line went though. those scare the daylights out of me.
It was about 20 years ago and I hit a 3" high pressure line about 3 feet down in a residential area in a city. I was doing some water (storm sewer) drainage trenching. Incredible how loud the roar is, and how it blows out the gravel everywhere leaving about a 5' x 5' x 5' crater. Then 4 fire trucks, police, emergency vehicles. All residents evacuated a block in each direction. Some people were refusing to leave and police had to help. All furnaces and hot water heaters shut off. Took about 2 hours to repair the pipe, then they had to go re ignite all the appliances for everyone, pretty much took most of the day. I was found 10% at fault because I didn't "call before you dig". I relied on the drawings provided by the property owner. Only cost me $4K. Incredible how many people crowded around and gave me dirty looks. I screwed up a lot of peoples lives that day, that's for sure.
I dug up a old air tank from cutting torch set , then put it back were i found it , i didn't want to know what was inside. It was on an old farm I was cleaning up
I have unearthed indian grinding stones, bottles, opium pipes, mine shafts, ore cars,blasting caps,silver ingots, cars,dozers, farm implements, an escape tunnel, and the list just goes on and on. Thats what 40yrs of excavation, demo, and land clearing will get ya. And I`m not done yet!
The old man found a 56 Chevy wagon while excavating for a furniture store addition. At the time (at least thirty years ago) it was a many month long process to dispose of an untitled car. The owner was very unhappy about this thing sitting around so we made it smaller and used it for backfill! Still there as far as I know.
I was working in Detroit and had a abandoned can on a site I was cleaning up. When I was finnished it was smaller than a refridgerator, it did not resemble a car at all. It was hualed in for scrap and it was called a red fridge... had no problem getting rid of it.
I've dug up alot of things. Worst was a high pressure gas line in a subdivision that was a mess. I've dug up some dead animals before, try to get them back in the ground as soon as possible. I've found all sorts of stuff cleaning up old farms, tractors, cars, you name it. I've got a old back powder rifle I found in a pond a few years ago in my garage. A good one was a few years ago we were on a grading job where the cival war came through and found about a dozen bullets and a couple arrow heads. That one was pretty neat. A funny one was oneday we tore down a building and I got all excited when I found a 1" copper line buried in the ground. this was back when copper was like 4.00 a lb so I was yanking all I could of it out, turns out I got a little happy and yanked it out of the side of the 8" main water line past the shut off valve... whoops. a good one was at my freinds company when the hit a 30" water main with a cat 330 and drained a 4 million gallon water tower in about 15 minutes. That one cost the insurance alot of money lol
I've had many my share also.Tons of bottles,cars,trucks,swing set in a homemade cess pool,huge sink hole from a rotted stump smack in the middle of a secondary road,abandoned oil drums,knocking out IBM's computer bank of fiber optic cables after an'' all clear'' from Dig Safely AND existing blueprints of the ''as-builts'',chicken,horse,cow bones,but my ''claim to fame'' was one mastodon skull--part of the youngest mastodon[12K years old] ever found on the planet---Hyde Park,NY,basically my backyard in 2000.That was cool. Entire skeleton of the big guy is a main attraction up at PRI's Museum of the Earth up in Ithaca,NY now.Push the button on the monitor and you will see muah on my backhoe.
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Cars, car parts, tow truck, empty fuel tank that was supposedly removed, petrified tree stump, three seemingly furnished house basements that were suppose to of been hauled away to the dump. lol
hahah some decent things discovered there
Silver Ingots???? Now that sounds like a real find! Were they in the escape tunnel? Sounds like you need to write a book. The worst is find thos old explosives and/or the mine shafts. You never know what is going to happen. We were logging and one of the guy fell in an old city well casing. I am not sure how big it was, but the EX200 wes in it far enough that he couldn't swing at all.
Ive dug a few items up mill stonse and grind rock. Horse bones, old truck cabs, barrels, a few old dozer parts, rock drill stems, septic tanks, RR irons, and old clam bucket all riveted construction, 3/8th yard and nearby and old 3/ths drag bucket. My boss wanted them and made the office flower beds from them. The most important and fun ones were and indian grind stone, and the camp fire pits they used alont the TN river that had the big river snails in it. That was about 50 feet above the river. They had a ton of them I found some with D66E Komatsu loader most with a 300. We were working beside a TVA steam plant and had a ton of these pits around it was cecked out with a Native American council. After the left I was building a coffer dam and had some real pointed rock teeth on the bucket. THere was a smooth potato shapedrock in the teeth. I got it shook out and picked it up. I knew what it was and a friend had a fit over it. He was taking a bathroom break behind a spoil pile and found the bowl it went with. Same job I was digging a trench for a pipe and found 2 75 foot sections of RR iron that had been buried. II tried to pull them up and it wouldnt budge I tracked over and dug a test hole and found the other ends. We torched the ones in the trench and finally got the old ones up. On the other end of that job I was digging another trench and dug up a bundle of Cat grader edges and dozer cutting edges brand new and a 55 gallong drum of end bits and bolts. I dug test holes al over lol. I got a bonus for the edges all ne stil lhad pain on them. The most fun thing we dug up I was loading out shot rock and and settin boulders out to the side. I had some spectators trying to motiopn me how to dig. I saw a little yellow wire and knew it was a shot that didnt go off. I picked up te next bucket I foundit. Igot it up and roled it out of the bucket beside them and they left.
Went to start a new job in a field that had never been touched before and the farmer who had owned the land warned me to look out for the caves. I couldn't understand what he meant until I eventually found them under the old pig houses. Turns out they were man made and had been used by the natives in Ireland to hide from Viking raiders. They had build the chambers of large stones. It was kind of like an underground stonehenge. We were told to shut up about it and just cover it over again. They are below someone's front yard now. I also had a hitachi 130 inside the building where they build all the furniture and fittings for the titanic. I dug up part of the floor to put in new drainage but didn't come across anything exciting. One thing I did dig up that was real nice was old bottles from maybe 150 to 200 years ago. There were also ceramic hot water bottle and ceramic beer bottles. They are all worth quite a bit of money so I've been told.
Maybe the most common thing I've dug up... golf balls. Doesn't seem to matter if we are anywhere near a golf for or not, I havent' been on a job yet, where we don't have at least a few in the topsoil.
Not very crazy- a mismarked 13KV primary cable. The craziest comment was after I hooked into a secondary (120V to ground)40' from the nearest markout a power co. field tech inferred that I marked out the entire 50 unit subdivision- elec., tele, water, CATV and sewer- to cover my mistake. My mistake was seeing the subdivision all marked out before I started and I didn't call to get a Digsafe #, the power co.'s issue was they marked out from a plan (construction or as-built , I don't know which) but didn't verify any cables with a locater.
Amazing how many golf balls you will find working in an empty field. I did a project where we built a wet land on a piece of city owned property. It was the only open area around for miles. Total site was 50 acres. It was amazing when we started stock piling topsoil. The dirt looked it was full of little round white rocks. Our grade checker didnt have much to do, so he was assigned to collecting golf balls. By the time the job was done, the foreman had a short bed half ton chevy pickup full of golf balls. I worked on one house where they found 12 cars buried in the foot print of the basement. I was sent out with a dozer to finish grade and spread topsoil. I was cutting a swale in the back yard, and noticed an odd feeling as a tracked along. The next pass, sure enough, the roof of an old chevy. Per the bosses instructions, I tore the roof off, filled with dirt, and spread topsoil. I also rolled an old fridge, box springs, and a few other chunks of metal out of that job. Most common item I dig up now, 55 gallon drums.
For me it was a rail road tank car buried in the middle of a 200 acre field. I clipped it and didn't break through it I had to work at it to pop the top hatch off with the 8, that's when I discovered it was full of liquid chicken **** and I have weak stomach, wasn't pretty getting that out of the ground, stunk for weeks.
what a question and was hoping to see some funny stuff. i've found a few gas lines but nothing fun with that
I wish id had dug up stuff as exciting as yours. For me it's just the usual junk. Not very exciting. Mark ELB Group - Industrial Equipment
Nerve gas canisters. Wasn't accidental though. We just didn't know exactly where the canisters were buried. Or what condition they were in. Case backhoe, shovels and picks, syringe of Atropine. From silver ingots to tanker of chicken poo. What a thread!!!
We was working for a mine in indiana and was building them a new railroad track to get coal out. Wee we had 110 ft of fill and we were using dirt from one of there spoil piles from back in the 60's and 70's! Well we were cutting out of there one nite and one of my scraper hand thought hed hit a rock cause it stopped him dead in his tracks and killed the machine. So i push him out and get to diggin around it amd its an old dozer. I guess they were done with it and didnt want to haul it off so they just buried it.
Down near ft. Belvoir va, I hit a 60 inch pipe laying up right filled with land mines. Was in a hitachi 350 and on the first half of a 20' cut.
Was in Blytheville, Ar in the late 90's installing some Sanitary Sewer in a farm field about 12 feet deep and ran across some large trees laid down horizontally in the bottom of the trench. I'm thinking from the New Madrid Earthquake in the 1800's??
Full grooved indian axe head,golfballs,couple log chains,bottles some old some not so old
A megaladon tooth about 6" tall 90 miles from the coast and about 23 Feet down.
Wow, that's incredible. Kind of sad too myself being a dog lover. I haven't pulled up too much cool stuff. Just some bottles and some other boring stuff.
Dug up a complete twin post in ground car service lift while cutting for a building pad in the middle of an old parking lot. Found literally hundreds of bowling balls and bowling pins while demo'ing foundations at a former state owned property. While trenching for a gas line, I uncovered a buried tank, turned out to be full of gasoline, about 5,000 gallons worth. Apparently a gas station occupied the site decades ago and the tank was forgotten about.
Two things, back in the early 70's one was a fairly high gravel bank in which we got into some kind of prehistoric elephant bones they were big, I think it was Boston University investigated that one. Second I remember knocking down a small state jailhouse from the Gunsmoke days, uncovered (like a strong box) with a thousand dollars in it. The state super took the box an I got $20hr with a new Ford 5550 hoe. Oh one more, clean up a homeowners back yard with dozer TD9 including sheds. Place so grown up thick briars etc. I could not check them out. Owner just wanted a big pile which he will burn it. Then bits and pieces of a Ford T touring car in a shed which I destroyed that made me throw up.
now this is devastating ^^^^^
My dad dug up a pig before, nothing else comes to mind apart from the odd water pipe
I don't know that it's all that crazy, but today, I dug up a,... Uh... I dug up one of these:
Shame we're so far apart, or I'd start trying to talk you out of it. It looks like a good thing to keep around the shop in case you ever need a, uhhh, a, ummm....
Well, I don't have one. Or, I mean, I didn't...
I think I found a piece of a meteorite. It's super heavy like steel but it doesn't rust. Kinda crystalline looking inside where it was fractured and melted looking on the outside. Purplish-redish, metal-looking. I'll take it to the University for identification someday, maybe. Abandoned utilities and septics. found a bunch of upside down washer tubs full of rich black dirt. An old metal spoked automotive wheel, someone said was for a Model A. Marbles, bottles and tableware. Lately my specialty seems to be finding mudholes. Mostly I find them under stumps. Its a stump when I find it and mudhole the next day when I come back.
It looks like a bucket chain off of a dragline.
I found an ammo can full of 30cal. Blanks. I thought it was gonna be full of cash, but no. Just blanks
Tuesday I "disturbed" a 5' long rat snake while pushing some old logging slash. He wasn't hurt, I put my gloves on to catch him but he didn't want any of that. Later on I was pushing the same slash pile and rolled a few rats out, then I realized why that snake was so big...:cool2
It was a good long time ago (I was on a case 450 crawler loader), and I pushed away a trash pile in an area right behind a grocery store. Must've been 20 rats in there. Know what? Rat hunting with a crawler is fun, even if you don't get more than a few...
Last spring while pushing out stumps, I opened up a nest of gardener snakes. I left em alone.
About 20 years ago I was asked to help dig a drain line on the edge of a cemetary.The old caretaker was digging along with his tractor mounted hoe and I was playing ditch monkey. After taking a bucket of dirt I stopped him I had seen a piece of old clay pipe. I asked him if there were any other lines running through the area.He didn't think there were so I jumped onto the ditch to check it out The old guy had a fit when I siad it wasn't a pipe it was a head and I held up a human skull. Turns out we were in an unmapped section of the cemetary and the pine box had completely rotted away.
I dug up an old deer bone nothing special
Found an indian arrow head once. No real treasure or anything though.. :drinkup Tyler
Crap, this is going to happen to me after I die... Something tells me... hah
Found a silver half dollar once while v-ditching along a road. Asked the owner if i could bring my metal detector back on the weekend to look for more, he declined, guess he thought i was going to get rich. I dug up a cow skeleton/carcass while laying sewer once also. Nothing too exciting really.
A German Luger. no body. no money. put it in the sand blast cabinet was hoping wasn't a round in the chamber
nice find !
without seeing the the thing from the flat it looks like a king pin attachment for a wrecker. You can attach two chains and slide it over the king pin of a tractor trailer to tow it with the tow bar. They can also be used to attach two winch lines to one single point of attachment on what ever your trying to winch out.
On a recent dirt job we were moving a stockpile of material and filling a temporary retention pond. The stockpile of material was on an adjacent lot and included spoils from the foundation of the shopping center that is located in the same development. I was on the dozer spreading the lifts. As the material was being spread, I picked out automobile A/C lines, a broken aluminum wheel and other misc car parts. I thought is was all junk until I pushed a chunk of body panel out that said "Civic". Don't know the story on the little car nor found anything else substantial like an engine, trans or frame.:beatsme But the aluminum wheel will become beer cans...
While installing a water line between 2 trailers in a park I dug into a tree that was down about 10 feet under a layer of sand that was compresses during the ice age. The tree was about 18 inch in dia where I dug into it and it ran both ways under the 2 trailers so we could not dig it up.It could have been 30-40 feet long. In this area we don't have tree this size. It wasn't rotten, it look like someone had just took the bark of the tree and buried it there.Should have cut a sample off of it.
I thought the same thing at first, but I do not believe that it is a king pin plate. The hole looks too square, not keyhole shaped. The shackles on the ends of the chain, as well as the wear on the links of the chain, suggest that they have seen a fair amount of abrasive wear leading me to think that this came from a dragline bucket as previously suggested.
Haven't dug up anything too intresting, hit wires and things that before. found a neighbors leech field that was intruding on another property once.
An oldy revisited I see,sure I posted years ago but what the hell,have nothing better to do at the moment: 1.Part of the big boy---the skull of the youngest mastodon ever found on the planet 2.bottles,bottles---more bottles 3.horse,cattle bones 4.old cars-trucks 5.an existing active leach field directly below one that I was installing 6.old timbers,abandoned cisterns,cesspools,redneck drywells,etc.
In 1998 while tearing down a old Ford dealership and excavating for a hospital we dug out 7 completely worn out track chains for D8 sized cats. There was also over a hundred smashed grease barrels buried there. A little research discovered that it was the machine yard for a long gone dirt outfit that was building the freeway at the time. We chased the garbage quite a ways to get it all out as it was 200 ft off the shore of Lake Michigan.
A few years back I found a steel wagon wheel while cleaning the mud out of a stock pond. There was an abandoned house next to the pond that dated back to the 1880's. During my time in the Army I managed to windrow up a WWII anti-tank mine, that was buried in the middle of a rifle range road. Good times....
I know where you can dig up a couple boxcars... And a very large and heavy counterweight from a mining shovel that fell off a truck lol. I'm real good at finding waterlines that they didn't know were there also found a 30 pair phone line that wasn't marked properly.
The one I forgot to mention.....Found a 36" water line with a D8. It emptied the million gallon water tank it was attached to, in a hurry.
Demoing an old garage once I Dug up the remains of a body, Based off dental records they were able to figure out it was an old unsolved missing person case. Garage was under construction around the same time of the dissapearance, they couldn't find any connection so it's still unsolved. It was under the garage slab about 3' down.
I know theres a D11 buried in a salt lake somewhere. Boss went bust and ripped employees off so they used the 2nd d11 to doze a slot and parked the first one in it and buried her up. Still there apparently although with the salt i doubt theres much left.
Damn. Now that's creepy.
^ There are just some bosses you don't want to ask for a raise.
My dad dug up a bundle of rattle snakes in the winter once. His hand decided he would pour gas on them and lite it. Nothing like snakes that are warm and on fire to close a site down!
:lmao April fools Nothing but golf balls and glass bottles
Its amazing how many golf balls I've dug up in my short time playing in the dirt!
120mm artillery shells. I was digging for pier footings in Picatinny Arsenal in Rockaway, NJ, had a brand news Dynahoe 190 backhoe, paint still on the bucket, they were the result of a explosion in 1927. No explosions but a lot of excitement none the less...
Last summer I was tearing down a old bar and grill. Found a HUGE, I mean HUGE bee hive in one of the walls. They were not happy with me removing there home. Lucky I was in a excavator with the door closed and AC. They covered the stop sign, about 3 deep, that was next to the lot. The bees attacked a crew that was putting up a new shop across the street. A couple of the guys came over and said I had to do something about the bees. I told them no way I am allergic to bees. ( I really am) and shut the door. About 10 minutes later one of the guys from the building crew armed with 4 cans of raid wasp and bee spray fired upon the stop sign colony. after about 2 cans he had to run for cover. I got a good laugh out of that. The next morning when I came to finish the job, the bees were totally gone. I don't think I will get any Christmas cards from the building contractor any time soon.
i pissed off a bunch of bees the other day and the contractor almost paid some one to come and kill the bees but i have a buddy who is a bee keeper and he came checked them out and relocated them