(The following Associated Press article was posted on the Reno Gazette Journal’s website on June 4.)
RENO — Excavation for the railroad trench through downtown Reno is turning up some archaeological treasures at the site of a bottling plant from nearly a century ago.
Workers have found more than 70 kinds of bottles at the site of the Frank Brothers and Anheuser-Busch bottling plant. A few even are intact. Others have the necks broken off or chipped rims.
“It’s pretty phenomenal,”archaeologist Ed Stoner told the Reno Gazette-Journal.
In the reject pile, workers also found glass tubing with fittings for putting carbon dioxide into the bottles.
The Frank Brothers and Anheuser-Busch bottles have eagles on their labels. Workers also found Pluto water bottles, known for a little devil trademark.
Frank Brothers bottled soda in strawberry, lemon and sarsaparilla flavors.
Peering over the sides of a trench late last week, nearly whole bottles stuck out in an exposed 2 1/2-feet thick layer of broken glass.
The bottling plant remnants aren’t all the archaeologists have found in the last three weeks. Working a 7,500-square-foot section of ground, they have uncovered:
_ What they believe was a cabin from the mid to late 1800s along with cut pieces of bone, a possible musket ball, Chinese pottery shards and at least one two-sided, chipped stone tool used by native Americans.
_ The concrete floor of a Swift meatpacking plant that opened in 1906.
_ A building that burned to the ground and left a thick layer of charcoal and nails, another building foundation and a mysterious”veneer”layer underneath.
_ A 400-square-foot stone foundation. The remnants of a mortared stone wall cuts through the middle of the square of stones.
But it’s the discovery of the bottling plant remains makes the site unique.
“We’re trying to get enough evidence to put this on the National Register”of historic places, Stoner said.