So what strainge objects have you found while doing roadwork?

[k0ua]

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, ....

No surprise there at all. I can explain that one.. a lot of people (myself included) like to use golf balls as shooting targets. I used to have a nice 125 yard range and shot my .308 at golf balls all the time. if often drives the balls back into the dirt and you don't find them all. I would just about guarantee that is why you found those golf balls there.

James K0UA

 

[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

 

[Wagtail]

Although I have yet to till my paddocks (haven't been worked in over 20 years) I have discovered 'mysterious' holes. As round as a modern car tyre and about 3 feet deep. As I discovered more of them they seemed to form an angular line.

A bit of historical investigation resulted in a 1916 military rifle range on my & my neighbours property with the 'butts' end being on mine. Interestingly, there is a grandfathered clause in the local council archives that says that the government can re-establish the range (if we ever go back to war with the Huns again, I suppose). The holes have now been filled in.

 

[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.