JohnRich 4 #51 April 17, 2006 QuoteI'm unable to find any handsome men on the far right of any pic. Maybe cropped? Ha ha ha. Yeah, right. I have a toast for you: "Here's to him!"... More stuff. Photo #1: We went out on the back roads looking for an old farming village, that used to grow food to support the mine workers in the area. The place was called San Vicente. Most of this road could be driven with a regular high-ground-clearance truck. But every once in a while, you reach a spot that absolutely requires four-wheel-drive. This spot was one of those, with a low trough full of soft, deep sand. I had my passengers get out to lighten the load, backed up, engaged 4WD, got a running start at it, and plowed through. Clouds of powdery sand went flying everywhere, but Big Red got 'er done! Photo #2: What's this odd circle of rocks in the desert? A desert form of a crop circle? An alien landing pad? I was told this was a "winnow". I had to look that word up. It means the process of separating chaff from wheat, for example. In other words, it's a place which would have had a pole in the middle, with a burro tied to the pole by a rope. The burro would have walked around in circles endlessly, pulling something behind him, in order to accomplish some task; processing food, grinding ore, pumping water, something... poor burro. Photo #3: This photo is from the "San Vicente site", which we tracked down from the topographical map. I scampered up a hillside to get a birds-eye view of the cemetary. This village thrived for a short time out here in the late 1800's and early 1900's. We counted 31 gravesites at the base of this hill, which would seem to indicate that a population of some size once occupied this area. Some of the graves were just piles of rocks. Two were nicely crafted concrete boxes. And one section even had a wrought-iron fence around it. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
JohnRich 4 #52 April 17, 2006 Photo #1: So where did all these Mexican farmers live? In rock homes, using stones gathered from the hillsides. In many cases, they would build against a hillside, using the hill as one side of their home. That way they only had to build three walls to complete a shelter. The roofs were supported by logs, which have all decayed and fallen in. These were simple one-room shelters, and not very big. Photo #2: The attached photo is some of the debris found at one of the stone home ruins. It's just trash, right? Ah, but you can learn so much from simple trash... The item on the right is a fragment of glass. Note the pinkish color. A story is in order here. Glass used to be made with lead, and one of the characteristics of that is that the glass would turn pinkish when exposed to the sun for a long time. After WWI the glass manufacturers eliminated the lead and switched to other minerals, which remained clear when exposed to sunlight for long periods. What does this mean? When you find pinkish glass in the desert like this, it means that it was made prior to WWI, thus dating the fragment somewhat, and the presence of the occupants of the area and their goods. And the item on the left is the bottom of a bottle. Molded into it are the words "J H McLean, Medicine Co., St. Louis, MO". Type that into a Google internet search and you come up with this interesting site: http://mcleansmedicine.com/ The Dr. J.H. McLean Medicine Company was making medicines as far back as 1841, such as "Volcanic Oil, pain relieving liniment", and is still in business today! And that is apparently the origin of this glass fragment. Some long-ago farmer soothed his aching muscles with Dr. McLean's Volcanic Oil. Just trash? Hardly! You can learn a lot about a place from its trash. Photo #3: A beautiful fossil impression of a seashell, from millions of years ago when this area was part of the Gulf of Mexico, as was the southern two-thirds of Texas. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
