Unexpected archaeological finds while building courses...????

[Mike_Young]

I know we often are encumbered from building courses in areas due to expected findings and studies but often the unexpected stops work for a few days or weeks while things are worked out.  Any tales out there of interest?    I'll start with a few:  Once hit an unmarked slave burial plot on a farmland course in Georgia.  I have had  worked stopped on a project when we unexpectedly found a civil war soldier's body as well as musket balls and a few buttons around the site.  I have had  worked stopped when spear heads and pottery was found intact on a stream bank in middle Georgia.  I have had to alter routings in Mississippi when Indian grounds were located or identified onsite.  I have had to alter routings in Costa Rica when Indian mounds were discovered.  I'm sure many more have had much larger issues than myself but I have never heard it discussed here before.  I know of one course in Georgia where a shaper had murdered his girlfriend and buried her for a few years before being discovered.  ( on the 13th hole of all places)   

Got to be more stories out there...

[Gene Greco]

Geez, Mike
Those are pretty hard to top

[Greg Chambers]

They found a Triceratops while building Fossil Trace in CO

[Mike_Young]

Geez, Mike
Those are pretty hard to top

I think there are some much more interesting ones out there....

[Tim Leahy]

They found a Triceratops while building Fossil Trace in CO

I remember fossils in the quarry walls also. Legacy Ridge near Denver also had fossils found on the grounds like a mammoth I think.

[Dave McCollum]

This should be good. 

[Tom_Doak]

We have only found something REALLY good on one occasion and it would not be prudent to talk about it on a public forum!

[Jon Wiggett]

I found a VW Beetle buried in the slope behind the first green whilst building Brahan GC. As I was uncovering the bonnet the thought did go through my head as to what I would do if the driver was still behind the wheel.


Jon

[Mike_Young]

We have only found something REALLY good on one occasion and it would not be prudent to talk about it on a public forum!

hmmmmm...weed or moonshine??   

[BCrosby]

Not exactly archaeological, but in the early 1970's Athens CC hired Richard Tufts to make some changes to the course. There had been problems growing grass on the 8th green, so they dug it up. Buried about six inches beneath the surface was a large truck engine block.


Bob

[Jeff_Brauer]

Mike,


Your stories are pretty good and also somewhat typical.  We have found bones, and had a project stop until it was determined they weren't human bones, or historic, just old cow bones.


Like you, whenever we worked in Atlanta, we found civil war remnants.  At Brookstone we found a natural rock bridge and waterfall over Pumpkin vine Creek near our proposed 14th green.  We moved the green close for visuals, and also researched enough to know that the Army of the Ohio used that to cross the creek.  Alas, when the subdivision was built, they ran the sanitary sewer right through it, dynamiting it in the process to a less aesthetic pile of rubble.


We found an old settlement house west of Ft Worth, TX) which had some great Danish pottery and plates.  It conjures up images of a cowboy taking his more refined New England wife out west, probably despite her will.  We have also found an underground fort, later determined to have been for protection against Indian raids.  And, we tried to save the easternmost cactus in Texas (according to a botanist) but drift from our nearby irrigation was enough water to kill it.

One thing we find a lot in Texas is old oilfield pipes. Found one last week. Not on any maps, as it had a "blanket easement" allowing the oil company to have laid it anywhere they chose on what is now our property....unfortunately, they chose the new 15th fairway.  They said they activate the pipe up to three times a year. Luckily it was dry when hit.  This project is right on the western edge of the original Spindletop oil field from the 1920's, so we may find more.

Back in the old days, we used to find old coke bottles wherever we dug, but the frequency of that has greatly reduced over the years.



Probably the most interesting thing I ever dug up was in Poplar Forest, VA, right below the second home of Jefferson, built in 1806.  We found he had used Tulip Trees, quite straight in growth pattern to fashion drain pipes.  They would saw them in two, hollow/carve them out like a melon, and then use leather to  strap the two halves back together to make drain pipes.




 

[Joe Hellrung]

Some additional discussion on this topic:

http://www.golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,62780.0/topicseen.html

[Mike_Young]

Not exactly archaeological, but in the early 1970's Athens CC hired Richard Tufts to make some changes to the course. There had been problems growing grass on the 8th green, so they dug it up. Buried about six inches beneath the surface was a large truck engine block.


Bob

Bob,
They also found the rear axle of a truck in that green...

Jeff,
I had heard you guys found many civil war relics at Brookstone...

[Randy Thompson]

Anybody remember the series, Hogan`s Hero? Sargent Shultz, I know nothing, I see nothing!

[Mark_Rowlinson]

They found part of a pterodactyl when building the original course at Portal in Cheshire. It was commemorated by a bunker shaped after the outline of a foot of said pterodactyl. Whether it still exists I know not.

[Pete_Pittock]

there is a thread about this a number of years ago, but I can't search for it with this computer. Discussed unexploded bombs, etc. I will check out the if anything has been found under golf courses in Egypt. Having dinner tomorrow with Dr. Zawi Hawass and I will ask - he's the expert.

[Marty Bonnar]

They found part of a pterodactyl when building the original course at Portal in Cheshire. It was commemorated by a bunker shaped after the outline of a foot of said pterodactyl. Whether it still exists I know not.

I HAD to go look!

Not sure how anatomically correct they are though!


Cheers,
F.

[A.G._Crockett]

I know we often are encumbered from building courses in areas due to expected findings and studies but often the unexpected stops work for a few days or weeks while things are worked out.  Any tales out there of interest?    I'll start with a few:  Once hit an unmarked slave burial plot on a farmland course in Georgia.  I have had  worked stopped on a project when we unexpectedly found a civil war soldier's body as well as musket balls and a few buttons around the site.  I have had  worked stopped when spear heads and pottery was found intact on a stream bank in middle Georgia.  I have had to alter routings in Mississippi when Indian grounds were located or identified onsite.  I have had to alter routings in Costa Rica when Indian mounds were discovered.  I'm sure many more have had much larger issues than myself but I have never heard it discussed here before.  I know of one course in Georgia where a shaper had murdered his girlfriend and buried her for a few years before being discovered.  ( on the 13th hole of all places)   

Got to be more stories out there...

For those of you who might think that Mike is either repeating or embellishing an urban legend, let me corroborate.  The story about the shaper murdering his girlfriend and burying her on the course is absolutely true.  I remember well when that story hit the papers.

[MCirba]

Seems quite the extreme step to create natural mounding.

[Jeff_Brauer]

While no body was ever discovered, I did have the police call me to ask if I had seen anything unusual on one site, because there were reports that a murder had occurred on what was becoming a new golf course.


But the saddest was a women in tears when they started excavating the parking lot.  The removed a tree that she had recognized as the one she buried her dog under.  We checked carefully, but found nothing that was obvious, so we wondered if she was mistaken.


Of course, we half expected to find bodies when digging up Jimmy Hoffa built La Costa........


While working with Killian and Nugent, we were walking with a mafia figure in the woods a few weeks before he was executed in a much more public parking lot in Chicago.  We thought we were safe in a secluded area.....and we were.


Someone brought it up in the older thread, so I must have told the story of finding Chick Evans golf balls in a willow tree at the Joe Black golf course (a renovation of his home Edgewater CC on the north side of Chicago).  He put them there, one per year, on his mothers birthday.


As to buried trucks and equipment, there are many on golf courses.  I sold a Chevy Blazer to Landscapes Unlimited in 1983, and a few jobs later, it crapped out, so they simply buried it on a course in Reno, NV. 


And, a few years back, west of Ft. Worth authorities started digging up a course, accusing the owner of not paying for construction equipment, and literally trying to bury the evidence.

[BCrosby]

".... I must have told the story of finding Chick Evans golf balls in a willow tree at the Joe Black golf course (a renovation of his home Edgewater CC on the north side of Chicago).  He put them there, one per year, on his mothers birthday."

Strange about Chick Evans, Jeff. Do you know anything more about the story? His way of memorializing his mother?

Bob

[Jeff_Brauer]

".... I must have told the story of finding Chick Evans golf balls in a willow tree at the Joe Black golf course (a renovation of his home Edgewater CC on the north side of Chicago).  He put them there, one per year, on his mothers birthday."

Strange about Chick Evans, Jeff. Do you know anything more about the story? His way of memorializing his mother?

Bob

Think that was it. That is what he told me when I picked him up for the grand opening.  This was 1977, so he may have been too old to really recall, and I may be too old now to really recall.........


The best part of the story was his one room efficiency apartment around the corner, with the bed folded up, and the golf nets down so he could practice every day. His wife was sitting behind the net for safety.

[BCrosby]

A sad last chapter. I seem to recall that Bobby Locke ended his days similarly.


Bob

[Dave McCollum]

Sorry, I'm with TD on this one.  Our most interesting find I can't discuss.  Not illegal or covering up transgressions.  So interesting, in fact, that I was most interested to see how the thread progressed. 

[Peter Pallotta]

....