A Rare Find Along the Cedar River

Meet Noah. He and his buddies were out exploring the river parks in Cedar Falls on Sunday. I was out looking for anything interesting to photograph when Noah and his buddies stopped by. While we were talking about photography Noah happened to look down at his feet. There he picked up two items on the Cedar River shore line. One item was a cattle bone that was cut into a ring or letter "O" shape. Next to that was this bit of history.

Noah picked up a clay pipe bowl without the stem. He handed it to me to examine and I cleaned it of sand. You have a clay pipe fragment from 1850 - 1900 I told him. The bowl is unbroken and in good shape. He offered to give it to me but I declined. I explained that he had found something special and should keep it. We looked up similar pipe fragments on eBay to discover a lot of 16 clay pipe bowls (without stems) are going for $80, so about $5 a piece.

Noah planned to show it to his history teacher today but more importantly he seemed to get real serious about "treasure" hunting especially since he actually found something cool.