Why Are They Called Junk Piles?

I’ve been to numerous junk piles…not garbage dumps in the sense of today’s verbiage but those in what are known today as ghost towns. These towns weren’t always ghost towns, obviously, but people lived there. Without a garbage system that we have today and are fortunate to have, these towns had to create their own dumps. There are numerous types of dumps from different time periods and different cultures.

Florida has many that are called shell mounds. Ancient and old Indian tribes would eat a lot of shelled creatures since they were close to the ocean and had access. They would collect their shells and other bones from animals they hunted and would pile it up. Today, a lot of these mounds are still around and mostly preserved. A lot have been torn down and the shells used for roads or paths but looking around, few remain today. Within the mounds are not only shells and bones, but trash from these ancient tribes such as broken spear points or other items that held no use. Even though the Indians were resourceful, once the point on an arrowhead broke in half, the piece was no longer of any use and was trashed and sit in the mound for thousands of years or more so now, scattered amongst the roads that used these ancient shell mounds.

Arizona and Western States had many ghost towns and with ghost towns came trash heaps. Railroads also had their own dumps. Having been to a few trails in Florida where the railroad once went through the areas now overran by hanging moss, if you look close enough you sometimes see shards of glass or metal. Most of these are from lazy and obnoxious hikers or hunters who litter and ruin the environment. Sometimes though, there are piles left from the railroad. Back before regulations, the railroads would dump their trash in a certain location and piles. The glass would shatter as trash was thrown from the train in these piles and the glass crumbles more each year. The same goes for other areas in the United States where railroads threw trash in collected piles.

One day I hiked an old, torn up railroad in Southwestern Arizona to journey for a day in the desolate desert, not seeing a single person. Often times I wandered off the railroad to find any remnants of past life and a few times ran into trash heaps off the side of the railroad. Most everything was broken as they lied for years and decades in the hot, desert sun but walking around, many random items can be found such as a 1960s Huckleberry Hound toy.

It’s not only large trash piles scattered scarcely throughout but often there were houses spread in the areas where people had once lived. They would often, especially in times of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, throw trash outside their homes or shacks. Wandering in certain areas you can notice so many and by what trash you see, you can estimate how old the area was or when people had lived there. In one such area where I found a round bottom bottle, that item told me the area was inhabited in the 1870s and 80s at minimum. Another area that I figured was quite old by walking around through the trees, miles away from any road and yes, actually lost if it wasn’t for the mountain I saw and knew how to get back, I saw an old leather sole of a boot. Those are common since they don’t break down very fast but this one looked peculiar. Then, I found the usual button…being so small, buttons are often found. In this same area that had a lot of older artifacts was this rare bottle, no more than two inches high. Surprisingly intact and well preserved, one of my favorite pieces is this circa 1880s opium bottle (pictured below). With mandarin writing on the bottle, these were popular in the Chinese opium dens and areas throughout the old west.

Remember though and be wary that some areas don’t allow collecting of anything found on the land – especially private land owned by the Bureau of Land Management and others. Now, unless it was a gold nugget or coin, to me that to me might be fair game. Still waiting for that, though.