Bottle Digging Gold Rush
By Kirsti Scott
Bottles from Marty’s collection (Kirsti Scott).
When beachcombers find a piece of glass or pottery with letters on it, many begin to wonder where it came from, what the rest of the letters say, and what the container held.
Bottles from Marty’s collection (Kirsti Scott). Photo of Marty digging bottles in the 1970s.
While beach glass and sea pottery collectors might look for a piece that is worn down and has a frosted patina, bottle diggers, mudlarks, and privy diggers look for the elusive flawless, pristine piece, with no cracks, wear, or cloudiness.
George Washington flask with colorful benicia iridescence found by Marty’s friend Steve Mello.
Marty Lucich is one of these bottle collectors. In his home in Capitola, California, his walls and windows are filled with displays of the many beautiful bottles in his collection. Display cases and tables hold more of his finds, including ointment jars, pot lids, porcelain doll pieces, clay pipes, and more treasures he found bottle digging on the California coast, throughout Silicon Valley, across the Central Valley, and up in Gold Country.
Bottles from Marty’s collection (Kirsti Scott).
Bottle digging is part archaeology, part treasure hunt, and part luck. Marty and his friends would search out locations that were being developed, exposing old foundations, privies, and more. When looking for a digging spot, they would search for the likely location of outhouses. Their ideal spot was an abandoned lot at an intersection near the center of an old town, where an outhouse likely sat in the back corner of the property. Before the advent of town dumps, regular household trash would be thrown away in the privy, including old bottles, broken plates, and more. “When they used outhouses, every 15 years it would fill up and then they dug another,” Marty explains. “So, if a house was built in 1850, you’ve got three outhouses to excavate.”
Marty and his fellow diggers would drive through towns that would have been bustling in the mid-19th century, now either deserted or soon to be redeveloped. They’d find a likely spot and start to probe the ground with a five-foot metal rod, first getting a feel for what the ground felt like and then probing for something that felt different.
“You just keep probing until the probe goes all the way down,” says Marty. “When you hit an outhouse, sometimes it’ll just fall right into it. Sometimes you pull up the probe and look at the tip, scanning for brick dust or ash from a wooden stove.”
Left to right: Choice Old Cabinet whiskey bottle, Fish’s Infallible Hair Restorer Bottle (courtesy of Marty Lucich). 1858 Fish’s Infallible Hair Restorer ad.
On one trip to the San Joaquin Valley, Marty and his friend kept coming across places where there was evidence of previous bottle digging still visible. “We went around different towns trying to find new places to dig, and we were getting skunked,” he says. On the way back, they decided to make one final stop. “There were empty lots near the old town. We found one where somebody had dug one of the later outhouses, but they missed the old one right next to it.” Marty found a Swan Brewery bottle (one of the earliest embossed beer bottles from San Francisco) and a Choice Old Cabinet whiskey bottle, which he later sold for several hundred dollars.
Marty’s dream find was a Fish’s Infallible Hair Restorer bottle in cobalt blue. “A friend of mine had one and I always dreamt of finding one,” Marty says. “Back in the 1970s, we went digging in Yolo, California, and found an empty lot, where I dug up one of these beautiful bottles. I sold it for $6,000 at auction.”
E. Wideman/J. Chappaz bottles, Ad for Celebrated Stomach Bitters (courtesy of Marty Lucich).
Another special find came early in Marty’s bottle digging days. “It was back in the 1970s, a day that luck was on our side,” says Marty. He and his friend Elmer found an apartment building in Marysville, California, with a gravel parking lot, which meant they would be able to use their metal probe to look for old outhouses. By 1857, Marysville was one of the largest cities in California, thanks to the Gold Rush. More than $10 million in gold passed through banks in Marysville on its way to the U.S. Mint in San Francisco.
Marty and Elmer got permission from an occupant and started their search. “Elmer was the strongest, so he did most of the digging. As he got close to the bottom, out came the first bottle from the hole, an eye-opening apricot puce bottle from E. Wideman/J. Chappaz,” Marty says. “Before I started to take it to the car, out came a second.” By the time they were done, there were six puce bottles and a seventh one, which was green.
“We knew quite a bit about bottles, but we had only seen broken examples of these bottles, and one other we ourselves had dug up earlier that year.” Through their research at the local library, reading years of the local newspaper on microfilm, they found ads that helped them identify the bottles. “We discovered that we had found these beautiful bottles next door to the E. Wideman Wholesale Liquor Warehouse,” Marty says. “We felt like detectives who had just solved a case.” The bottle is from one of the earliest manufactured western bitters. Marty sold each of his bottles through American Bottle Auctions for over $3,000. “Not bad for one outhouse!”
Bottles from Marty’s collection (Kirsti Scott).
Early bottle diggers would search in town dumps, but a lot of the dumps have already been stripped. “I found my first bottle in a dump, but I’ve hardly gotten anything out of dumps,” says Marty.
Bottles from Marty’s collection (Kirsti Scott).
Nowadays, most construction sites and abandoned lots are fenced off, though people still sneak in to hunt for bottles. “I had always been told that hotels can be really good for digging,” Marty says. They used to discard their trash in outhouses, also.
Left to right: Bottles from Marty’s collection (Kirsti Scott). Bottles dug from hotel in Nicolaus, California (courtesy of Marty Lucich).
He dug at a hotel in Nicolaus, California, which was a major stopping point on the Feather River during the California Gold Rush. “We got a lot of bottles, which you can see in the picture (above) in the backyard.”
William E. Mayhew Bay Rum bottle (courtesy of Marty Lucich).
While digging with a friend in Hollister, California, Marty found a William E. Mayhew Bay Rum bottle, one of very few known that are intact. Bay rum was a type of cologne or balm, and this one may have held Mayhew’s patented Balsamic Hair Stimulant, whose label claimed, “This Balsamic Preparation has proved itself to be the BEST ever offered to the public for exciting the scalp to a new and healthy action; for cleaning the head from Dandruff and Scurf, for preventing the HAIR from falling off, and for producing a fine growth of NEW HAIR;—a fact to which those who have used it are ready to testify. Copyright Secured. Prepared only by W. E. Mayhew Apothecary, Northwest Corner of Fourth and Howard Sts. San Francisco.”
Though Marty doesn’t do much bottle digging anymore, he still loves admiring the sunlight stream through his colorful bottles. If you are interested in starting bottle digging, check out the tips below.
Bottle Digging Tips
A beachcomber’s dream is to find a whole, beautiful, colorful bottle on the beach, but to find an unbroken bottle, you might have to get away from the waves…and grab some extra gear.
Location: Find a place where someone in past centuries threw out their garbage. In some cases, it was a body of water, like a river, stream, harbor, or lake, so you can check riverbanks and beaches along these waterways. On private property, look along property lines and fences or walls, as someone would have wanted the trash far away from their house. Trash may have been tossed over a cliff, down a ravine, or in a gully, in which case you have less of a chance of finding whole bottles. Check out 19th-century fire insurance maps in your local library, as they would list all the houses and wells for each property. When indoor plumbing was installed, some homeowners used the old wells to dump trash. Find the location of an old, abandoned town dump—they often were located near graveyards and swamps.
Permission: Make sure you get permission to search for bottles. Obey all posted signs, check the local laws, and ask the owner if you want to search the grounds or structures on private property.
Safety: In addition to the chance of coming across broken glass, shards of pottery, and rusty metal, old wells and privies can be unstable and collapse. Be careful around water, waves, and slippery surfaces.
Gear: Bring a probe to check the ground, a shovel for digging, and a hand rake. Bring a metal detector because dumps and privies also have metal debris. Wear sturdy clothes, boots, and work gloves to protect yourself from broken glass. Don’t forget water and snacks so you don’t have to risk piracy when you leave your treasure trove to refuel!
Learn more about bottles
Learn more about identifying bottles by shape and color, the history of bottle manufacturing, stoppers, marbles, and more. Articles ›
This article appeared in Beachcombing Magazine Volume 47 March/April 2025.
