Way back in my younger years, I had the good fortune to work for a large timber company as a logging engineer. This was in the northwest coast of California among the redwoods. We were in the process of transitioning from old gorwth timber to second growth (most of which was still rather large) and my job incorporarted going out and engineering areas to be logged. This was one of the best jobs I had.
Daily we would find artifacts from a 100 years ago. My favorites were the reconstruction projects on railroad grades. Invariably, we would follow a grade to a relaod area or a camp and the findings were surreal. A coworker always found the outhouses, because that is where he could find old whiskey bottles. The loggers hid their whiskey there. The cook would bury the china rather than move it when camp was abandoned. We came accross tons of abandoned china, boots, beds, lunch boxes, spikes and bottles. We had a game of looking for spar trees, because we could always find the chaser's coffee mug. My wife never understood or appreciated the stuff I would bring home. I still have one mug, which I cherish because of all the mugs we found, this one has no cracks or checks in it.
Railroad logging was pervalent around the turn of the last century. We constantly found parts of cars and tools, especially at the reloads. We found a few engines and yarders too. One in particular was a gypsy that had been pulling cable away from a spar tree, when the weight of the cable exceeded the weight of the loco. Unfortunately the engine was on a curved trestle when gravity took over. It was pulled off the tracks and down a draw. Everything was intact, but instead of yarding the engine back up the hill, which was less than 100 feet, they left it where it lay. I spent days scampering over it.
Of course the economy being what it was, caused me to change careers, but I sure miss those days of old.
Fil