While I was out walking this morning, some brown objects amongst the desert vegetation caught my attention. A small wash had some old, rusty tin cans in it. I decided to take a closer look, and started walking up the wash. Dumps in the desert are fairly common, especially because early miners rarely took any garbage with them. They didn't have Uhauls back then; they often were lucky to have a good wagon. Many miners only took what they could carry on their back from one mining town to the next. Once in awhile they left something interesting behind.
Some bright blue glass was a nice bit of color contrasting with the other trash. Often people go out and scour the desert looking for these trash piles, because an intact bottle might be worth a dollar or two if it's old enough.
Some of the old debris is a bit confounding. Why is this metal bucket filled with concrete? Washes can be good places to find the old trash because it gets washed down them, and it was also easier for people to throw things downhill or dump a wagon into the gully.
I walked long enough to find the motherlode, a huge pile of old tin cans. I happened to be on National Park Service land, and the park archeologist has trained the staff not to pick up old cans like this. Even though it might look like trash to most of us, because it is over 50 years old, it is considered historic, and is thus protected. If the old tin cans are taken to the archeologist, she loses information about where they came from. She also has to catalogue them and put them in the museum. The museum is a locked room where no one gets to see them, so they don't do much good there. She likes to tell the story of a Boy Scout troop who thought they were doing a good deed and brought her three or four trash bags full of old tin cans. She had to process each one, plus they made the historic district they were taken from lose some of its flavor.
When I look at these trash piles, I can only wonder what people are going to think about our trash someday.
Some bright blue glass was a nice bit of color contrasting with the other trash. Often people go out and scour the desert looking for these trash piles, because an intact bottle might be worth a dollar or two if it's old enough.
Some of the old debris is a bit confounding. Why is this metal bucket filled with concrete? Washes can be good places to find the old trash because it gets washed down them, and it was also easier for people to throw things downhill or dump a wagon into the gully.
I walked long enough to find the motherlode, a huge pile of old tin cans. I happened to be on National Park Service land, and the park archeologist has trained the staff not to pick up old cans like this. Even though it might look like trash to most of us, because it is over 50 years old, it is considered historic, and is thus protected. If the old tin cans are taken to the archeologist, she loses information about where they came from. She also has to catalogue them and put them in the museum. The museum is a locked room where no one gets to see them, so they don't do much good there. She likes to tell the story of a Boy Scout troop who thought they were doing a good deed and brought her three or four trash bags full of old tin cans. She had to process each one, plus they made the historic district they were taken from lose some of its flavor.
When I look at these trash piles, I can only wonder what people are going to think about our trash someday. 
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