There's an old dump adjacent to the Cedar River in Cedar Falls, Iowa. As the sandy soil erodes, a mix of industrial and residential discarded material surfaces. Present in this image are fragments of coal and a large iron I-stake. A few steps away are shards of glass from broken small bottles and various busted ceramic pottery. Its an interesting area but be sure to wear thick footwear. Clues from the marks on the ceramics and other material suggest that the majority of the dump contains items from the late 1800s. About three feet away from this stake is where lucky Noah (see previous post) found the clay pipe bowl.
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.
