Excavating former outhouses is probably most people's idea of a crappy time, but to Rosemount Area Historical Society members, the task presents a unique opportunity to reclaim a piece of the past. In fact, thousands of pieces.

The Rosemount Area Historical Society spent more than two years excavating a local dump and several outhouses in Rosemount, and its members will share their findings at Outhouse Archaeology from 6:30-8 p.m. Thursday, March 9, at the Robert Trail Library, 14395 South Robert Trail.

The idea of excavating former outhouse sites presented itself to the Historical Society in 2003, when a bottle collector showed up to a meeting and told members he was looking for opportunities to add to his collection. He said the best place to find old bottles was where early outhouses once stood.

Rosemount Area Historical Society member John Loch said the timing was right. It just so happened that many old houses were being torn down in Rosemount to make way for new developments.

"It was kind of a fortuitous time because we knew the city had been buying a lot of property downtown where the old homes were," Loch said. "So we only needed to get an OK from one entity to do this."

Loch and Rosemount Area Historical Society President Jerry Mattson worked quickly, as new buildings were going up fast. They and the two bottle collectors who joined them were able to amass thousands of items on 40 different excavations over the next two years.

Loch said the four men began by searching for depressions caused by decaying matter along property lines, where the odors wouldn't permeate the house. They then used probes to push into the dirt. Traces of ash indicated they were in the right spot, as many homeowners layered ash from their wood burners on top of the holes to cut down on the stench.

Loch said most outhouses in the late 1800s and early 1900s also served as dumping sites.

"What are you going to do with all your garbage?" Loch asked. "The easiest place to do it was throw it down the hole."

Homeowners had three options. They could dig a deep hole that took many years to fill up because the garbage would start to decay, or they could dig multiple, shallow holes side by side.

"When they filled up, you moved over 2 feet and dug the next one," he said.

Or, if families lived in the city and were short on space, they could dig a shallow hole and hire a dipper, who had the unfortunate task of digging out outhouse holes so they could be reused.

The most common item Historical Society members found were whisky and medicine bottles and fragments. They also dug up glassware, dishware, buttons, hair combs, railroad spikes, crooked nails and cosmetic jars. In Apple Valley, they dug up an old personalized revolver they surmised had either been abandoned or fallen out of someone's pocket. One of Loch's favorite finds was parts of women's ankle-high, laced, leather shoes.

Other interesting discoveries included a clay smoking pipe with a figure on it, a liniment bottle from the Civil War, and an emblem once worn on the hat of a railroad agent who they think was a boarder in a house that burned down. Loch said the group uncovered more than 3,000 artifacts in one particularly lucrative hole, which they nicknamed the crock hole because of all the butter crock fragments it contained.

Reassembling the bits and pieces of broken artifacts was a lot like fixing a puzzle, Loch said. He and Mattson learned to closely examine the color, texture and thickness of each fragment, as well as any markings they could find.

They were able to date items by looking at the types of glass, the models of lightbulbs or oil lampshades, and whether bottlenecks were blown or molded. Embossments and printings also provided clues, since certain marks were only produced during specific time periods. Most of the holes they dug up dated from the late 1800s to 1930.

Despite the long process of finding and excavating the holes, cleaning the artifacts and trying to piece them back together, Loch said the outhouse archaeology project was fun.

"It took a long time trying to match the pieces together," he said. "It was one of the most enjoyable things that we did, because you never know what you're going to find."