Outhouses!

[rustycoinUT]

When detecting old houses or buildings do you hit the outhouses and if there was an outhouse before how can you find where it stood? I am just curious.

If you do dig the outhouse what is your best finds there?



HH
rustycoinUT

[PAPPY]

OUT HOUSES are one of the BEST PLACE'S IN THE WORLD to find bottles, coins, relics. Usually the Privy stood around 75-100 feet away from the house. You can use a probe...Make one about 4' long and probe the ground around your hunting site and find the loose-soft dirt. Using the probe will also detect glass and metal when you make contact with it. GREAT place to SIFT....PAPPY

[NB Digger]

And remember to wash your hands afterwards. LOL!!! But Pappy is right. They are awesome spots to dig in and often yield a plethora of good finds.
Travis

[rustycoinUT]

Thanks for your replies to such a crappy subject I have wondered about this for a long time. I am wondering about Ghost town outhouses because most of the time the places i look at was tent cities out side of town. What do you think was there a community trench or a row of outhouses. any help with this is appreciated

rustycoinUT

[NB Digger]

I would bet that in or on the outskirt of the town there were some "row" latrines set up. But that also might depend on the size/population of the town. The larger the town I would think, the more of a need to have the priveys in one or two areas. I am not all that familiar with old town set ups though and have only dug individual house site priveys. The Union regulation at a camp site was 9 priveys all in a row.