So what strainge objects have you found while doing roadwork?

[crazyal]

Over the past few years I've unearthed plenty of objects that I wasn't expecting. So what treasures :laughing: have you found?

Last summer I was stopped dead when using the rippers on my grading scrapper. Someone had used two sections of stainless steel duct work as a culvert. I think each section was only 3' long so the 6' duct wasn't really wide enough to work and soon the downhill side got blocked with dirt and silt filled the duct turning it into a heavy anchor. I'll try to take a picture of the duct and post it (I know the rules, no picture it didn't happen).

I've found various vehicle parts from a master cylinder to a leaf spring. The leaf spring was laying on it's side and when the blade caught it I dragged it for quite a bit because it was under the tractor out of sight. The front hit the edge of the pavement at the end of the drive and broke a chunk off before deflecting to the side where I could see it. I have one section that had PVC pipe used as a culvert. Over the years it has broken into pieces and each year I dig more of it up. The odd thing is that there must have been more than one buried since I have found, white, blue, and green PVC. I found a section of chain link fence, that was a surprise. All of a sudden I was low on power. When I looked back all I could see was what looked like the whole driveway being dragged behind me. I think I have found almost everything (except for the endless amount of rocks) there is to find.

So has anyone else been as lucky as me?

 

[paulharvey]

I have found everything from arrow heads, sledge hammers, forged nails, well casing, 2" diameter steel rod 6 ft long, and some supicios leg bones that didn't look to be deer or bear, but too long to be coon or coyotes or hog. Mostly on construction projects, not on my property. One thing that kinda surprises me is where you will find golf balls, 9 miles back into the national forest, in the middle of a rock mine, ....

On my little 2 acres I've found a handful of CV joints, wheel bearings, be frame. On moms 50 acres I've found the remains of a old septic tanks and a well from a house that was there a hundred years ago, that no one knew about (its 50 acres of scrub oak woods).

 

[kentuckydiesel]

I found an old bear claw the other day.

-Phillip

 

[orezok]

Many years ago I was building a shopping center in a San Diego suburb. The site was low and we were importing dirt from the basement of a new high rise downtown, about 20 miles away. The material was basically beach sand as it was right on the bay.

The dirt was front end loaded at the site, transported 20 miles in a bottom dump, dumped and then spread by a 14.

What did I find? A old fashion large base light bulb still totally intact!

 

[Beltman60]

an old vw bug motor and transaxel
only about 20" deep

 

[woodlandfarms]

i have found my collection of oddities (and not so odd meth perephenalia). but the story I wanted to share is that my neighbor manages a national wildlife refuge. Pretty big area. lots of history, lots of native american artifacts. There is a staff archeologist who is tracking some of the native american movement on the land. so my neighbor has to dig a trench, and along the way up comes a blue plate. He looks at it, it is maybe 50's or 60's Probably a farmer had lunch brought to him on a plate and he forgot it. So into the dirt pile it goes. Flash forward a month and the archeologist goes by and see the blue plate and goes nuts. Comes back to my neighbor and reads him the riot act. It turns out the the fed mandate has that anything older than 50 years is to be preserved as a relic.

 

[Dr_Zinj]

I just know that one of these days I'll be running the plow and dig up a perfectly preserved Twinkie.

 

[kentuckydiesel]

I just know that one of these days I'll be running the plow and dig up a perfectly preserved Twinkie.

Nope...the unions killed the Twinkie.

-Phillip

 

[MBTRAC]

Apart from the usual buried small debris/junk, like old tools, countless horse shoes, chain...& engine blocks etc :

- I once come to sudden halt using a 150hp tractor with a 10ft 3PL rear blade final finish spreading gravel on one of our farm roads that's been down for c.50years or more. Stopped entirely & bent the blade cutting edge when we encountered what turned out to be the end of a wayward 18ft length of railway iron buried from just under surface where we hit to angled depth of 7ft under where we finally dug it out with an excavator (how it got there some 50years ago with no railways for 150miles is another of lifes mysteries......)
- Recently forming up a new farm road we hit with a 200hp FEL what we first thought to be a large rock, the bucket cutting lip threw one huge spark & made that screaming sound like fingernails being dragged down a blackboard...... What initially looked like a c.3T rock just below the surface & the only rock we've encounter for miles around in this shale clay area turned out to be (the more we dug around the perimeter with an excavator) a petrified tree trunk of 20ft+ & c.36" diameter, needless to say we left it alone & rerouted the road slightly

 

[crazyal]

A neighbor got his hands on some i-beams from a small bridge and put the on the back edge of his property in the woods. Over the years they have been covered by vegetation and some dirt. In a few years they will be covered up and lost until some one stumbles across them. I recently found an old Dodge tailgate not far from them. Where it is a pickup could never get so it's not like it fell off. One of history's little mysteries.

 

[dave1949]

A neighbor got his hands on some i-beams from a small bridge and put the on the back edge of his property in the woods. Over the years they have been covered by vegetation and some dirt. In a few years they will be covered up and lost until some one stumbles across them. I recently found an old Dodge tailgate not far from them. Where it is a pickup could never get so it's not like it fell off. One of history's little mysteries.

Rock walls and boundaries seem to have been the goto place to pile old auto body parts here. In a couple places I have small piles of mostly rusted away fenders, hoods, etc. They look to be from cars made in the 1930's-1950's, or old ag equipment sheet metal. There not enough left to tell for sure.

Found my second car gas tank not too long ago, laying on a rock wall. One V-8 engine from the 1960's. And the hardware remains of a house and barn that must have burned long ago. Horseshoes, sickle bar mower (with a spare set of teeth scattered around ), horse harness and bits, tin cans, nails and spikes, silo hoops, tin roofing, shovel heads, hand tools, wagon wheel rims and assorted chunks of nondescript metal.

The neighbor kids hauled off a heaping pickup load last summer for the scrap money.

This property hadn't had anybody living on it for many years, but there is an old tote road running through it. I think people dumped stuff here now and then years ago.

 

[Ed Hill]

I have only had a tractor for 4 years and limited my digging so far to my own land. However, I am a retired forester. Many times I have found things what is now "way out in the woods" but was once a saw mill site, or the center of a farm, or even an inn. People often abandon vehicles in these remote locations, and one must assume, given human nature, thus has it ever been. I know where several old cars are parked, where Model T parts have been pushed to the surface by frost, where an old railroad jack sits on a ledge, miles from any railroad, and so on. It may not be right, or environmentally correct, but that is how it is. You never know what you can dig up, or where.

Ed Hill

 

[paulharvey]

Found a 1943 nickel yesterday. There was an old school there years ago, but its been demo'd for years(closed atleast 15 yeats ago),

 

[Xfaxman]

I was walking trough the woods north of the house, looking for the best way to put a road down to pond. I looked over toward the creek bank and saw this old wooden pot. There is a design carved around the top.

 

[Wagtail]

Xfaxman, that is really interesting... and worthy of some investigation by local historians.

If you do decide to investigate, please keep us posted. :thumbsup:

 

[buickanddeere]

The usual horse shoes and harness pieces. Old tires, batteries, booze bottles. Ploughed up a complete and intact street Yield sign. Well preserved and barely rusted sheet metal from a 50's era Ford pickup. Clay keeps the oxygen sealed away. Two old steel wheel ground drive manure spreaders with welded on 20" truck rim and tires . Still use the one for a trailer to haul firewood and junk to the dump.