On a recent July day, the volunteers digging near Minute Maid Park found children's marbles, ceramic pieces marked in German, glass-blown bottles and 20th-century rubber boots - all signs of a nearly 200-year-old community that foreshadowed the diverse and multicultural metropolis that is Houston.

The discovery of the historic artifacts is a result of a downtown Houston bridge reconstruction project that has prompted a decade-long archeological odyssey culminating with an extensive excavation of the community known as Frost Town. The Elysian Viaduct replacement, a bridge widening project that will cost an estimated $36 million, is slated to begin this fall.

Frost Town, a subdivision settled in 1836 - the same year the Allen Brothers founded Houston - set the tone for this city as a place for people across the globe to seek and find opportunity.

"What we try to do is record as much information from the very first community in Houston that we can before the bridge comes in and it's all destroyed," Texas Department of Transportation archeologist Jason Barrett said. "The history of this site - and really this city - is people who came from elsewhere and they settled here and they combined into a cohesive community."

Influx of residents

In 1837, Texas Revolution veteran Jonathan B. Frost purchased 15 acres of land along Buffalo Bayou from the Allens for $100 an acre. He died the same year. Frost's brother started selling lots in 1838 in an area spelled "Frostown" in some historical records.

Over the next 150 years, the community welcomed an influx of working-class residents. First came the German and Irish boot strappers, then formerly enslaved black people after the Civil War and Mexican immigrants in the early 20th century. By the 1930s, the area had the nickname "El Barrio del Alacran." What became Frost Town is enshrined in modern Houston history as a historic Hispanic neighborhood that was one of the cornerstones of the East End.

Plans to replace the elevated bridge have been on the drawing board since at least 1987; concerns about its structural integrity were first documented as early as 1986.

Community disagreement about contemporary aesthetics and impact shifted to historical concerns about a decade ago.

The Antiquities Code of Texas, enacted in 1969, requires testing on any public property to determine if there is significant archeology before any ground-disturbing construction by a government agency to avoid any negative impacts on natural or cultural resources.

Archeological research has been underway off and on since 2004.

"The ground has not been disturbed since the 19th century, and that's why this is such an important archeological project," Houston historian and author Louis Aulbach said. "There aren't very many places in downtown Houston where you can get to materials that date to the 19th century."

The people who populated Frost Town looked much like the Houston of today: Black. Brown. Immigrant.

They were the laborers who made the port, the cotton compresses, the lumber mills and the railroads run. Some members of these early families would make their marks in government and business.

"We know a lot of their names, but we don't know how they lived their lives. That's what we're filling in here," Barrett said.

The archeological work is adding details to the history of a striving community that hasn't been recorded with the same depth as more affluent areas of old Houston.

"If you were an industrial worker, you could live relatively close to where you're working and in fairly modest rental properties," Aulbach said. "After about 1900, the Mexican Revolution sent a lot of people out of northern Mexico, so they came to Houston because there were jobs. The deep-water port opened in 1914 and so you had a large influx of Mexican immigrants, and they needed places where they could afford to live and the Second Ward was a good place."

Dusting off decades

Census records in the first four decades of the 20th century show a community of black and Hispanic residents who worked in ship channel industries, Aulbach said.

Built in the mid-1950s, the Elysian Viaduct joined infrastructure including railroads, Highway 59 and a power substation that decimated residential parts of the community. Development in the late 1990s snuffed out the area's remaining homes.

Dusting off the decades of underground layers has brought the evolution of Frost Town into sharper focus. The latest and most extensive dig began this summer.

Volunteers, including members of the Houston Archeological Society, have helped sift through debris to increase the number of artifacts recovered.

"We wouldn't be screening all that dirt otherwise," Barrett said. "They're finding the small bits of pottery, pipe stems and bottle fragments."

The focus has been a brick-and-mortar cistern from a 19th century residence belonging to the Steiner family. The catchment was the home's water source before city water service.

"We are getting tons and tons of bones from pigs, chickens, cows - you name it," said Doug Boyd, a contract archeologist who is vice president of Prewitt and Associates, a cultural resources services firm in Austin hired by TxDOT.

Teams also recovered an intact ceramic jug at the bottom of the cistern believed to have been used between the 1880s and the 1910s.

"These were like the Tupperware that you used to store all your food in and liquids and keep things cool," Boyd said. "These things were very, very common after the Civil War."

Most of the recovered items are mundane and reveal how regular folks stored food and beverages as well as what toys were played with by children.

"It's nothing earthshaking, but it adds texture to the history," said Aulbach, whose 2012 book - "Buffalo Bayou: An echo of Houston's wilderness beginnings" - includes a chapter on Frost Town. "Most of history revolves around the powerful people - the movers and shakers. When we go to places like Frost Town, we learn about just the ordinary people and how they lived. It gives a broader perspective to a history of an area."

First designated site

In 2009, Frost Town became the city of Houston's first designated archeological site, and it has a Texas Historical Commission marker.

Those honors were prompted by Houston artist and preservationist Kirk Farris, who developed an interest in Frost Town three decades ago. He championed the creation of the nearby James Bute Park and upgrades to the McKee Street Bridge, then pushed the Houston Archaeological and Historical Commission to designate the early community as a protected landmark.

"We are creating a layer of substantial fact to the story," Farris said of the archeological work.

Aulbach, who also is vice president of the Houston Archeological Society and serves as a Texas Historical Commission archeological steward, believes TxDOT could have left the bridge elevated "but they chose to bring it down on grade level which meant that it would change the whole environment there."

He had hoped the city would redevelop Bute Park into a historical area on downtown's east side to mirror Sam Houston Park on the west side near City Hall.