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Another archaeological find --this one under City Hall's lawn:

It started last fall when a soil survey team from the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) began to dig a soil pit in City Hall Park adjacent to city hall, as part of the agency’s soil survey.

While collecting soil samples, NRCS scientists unearthed the first three feet of material, nothing out of the ordinary struck them from a typical soil dig in an urban center. But they dug a little deeper and discovered something extraordinary.

“At first glance, I thought we had unearthed crushed up brick material, which is common of anthropogenic soils in urban areas,” said Randy Riddle, NRCS soil survey project leader. “After digging a slightly larger hole to get a better view, we noticed that whole red bricks were leveled horizontally. The oriented brick layer was continuous throughout the bottom of the excavated area.”

The discovery led to consulting with a number of local historians to identify what the group found. At first thought, it seemed like the red bricks made up an old brick road now buried deep.

But after multiple discussions with historians and looking at dated pictures of the exact spot, it turns out the bricks constituted a subfloor for a former dentist’s office that boasted painless teeth extractions for a mere 50 cents.

The dentist’s office was one of the final tenants in the Lichtenberger Building, located on the corner of First and Main streets, and destroyed in 1926 to make way for the city hall complex.

Full Article Here


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