Digging an old riverside dump! Adventures with Greg!

hi I'm Alex archo I've been buying and selling antiques since I was a kid over the years generations of our family have gotten involved in the business and I'll search just about anywhere I can to find hidden treasures both big and small I never know what I'll turn up next it's about exploring new places seeing new sites and having fun and even though sometimes I get over my head we try and make things a little better along the way this is curiosity in well good morning everybody today is one of those days where you kind of Wonder am I making the right decisions with my life and not because I'm going to visit my friend Greg I'm looking forward to that it's because we've decided to revisit the river valley here in Edmonton which um at one point before they had proper um recycling facilities they used to just pretty much dump the garbage towards part of the river and this is like 100 years ago um in Spring it's has time to go down there because that's when the frost pushes the uh old debris back to the surface um over the past couple years I know people who have found old Coca-Cola porcelain uh enamel push bars um Greg found an old toy car excuse me I'm getting ver climed just thinking about it uh I found an old toy car um so I really don't know what we're going to find down there um it's a little bit of a risky Endeavor but it's a nice sunny day and I figured why not so today follow along as we go uh dig up some of Edmonton's past um and explore and see what we can find down by the old dump site by the river so off we [Music] [Applause] go well we made it to the park and uh found a Greg along the way and last time you were here was the last time I was here too that was that was I think before Co it was I was probably like 2018 or 19 or something it's been a while anyway um so we'll see how different it is um coming out this time of year is like I said it's not a bad time to come because the uh Frost over winter pushes debris to the surface so there might be some things that we didn't see last time or I don't know we'll find out and uh we noticed walking through the park here that they've got a a crew of volunteers with garbage bags picking up trash from around if they only knew where we're going the job that they'd have ahead of them if they really wanted to tear into it but um from the surface it doesn't look so bad here but when you get down to the nitty-gritty side of the river bank that's where you find the stuff see this area looks all nice like it's a it's a dog park see there's a dog and uh it's green and grassy and fairly well manicured looks all good but where we're going is a little more Rough and Tumble a little uh less cared for I think did we take this path before off to the side I think so yeah okay well it's been a while we'll go this way okay we'll go this way this is kind of where we're headed down in that area there we've got to go up and around the corner but you can see when I'm filming this and I'm filming this in uh what is it April late April April 20th is when this is being filmed sometimes you guys watch these videos it's not the exact same time that I film it but the ice is uh flowing off the river insta death if you fall in there not want to do that today we are almost at our spot and I I remember it because there's this flat Plateau area and at one point there used to be buildings all along here and uh this whole area flooded in the 1950s so all these 1920s sort of houses and buildings that were down here some industrial were all lost or washed into the river or shoved into the river in some point so that's why there's so much debris in this particular area cuz a whole neighborhood got kind of washed away so this Begins the uh search for us to find a spot to get down the side of the bank safely I'm at the spot I must been braver a few years ago cuz this is like almost a vertical drop down there it doesn't look like on camera but I know I'm here you can see the old bottles that have popped out of the ground over winter uh I'm going to try going down that way I've made it to the River's Edge Edge uh Greg did not want to come down that you know it never looks so bad on camera but as you're coming down the Steep sort of Cliff Edge there's like Jagged bits of metal and stuff sticking out so definitely uh don't recommend this especially not for a novice I was walking my way down going you're not a young man anymore oh hey look a bottle Prairie Rose that's 1940s era that wasn't there last time I mean it's also been years but looks like there might be some stuff that popped out let's keep looking trying to uh decipher what some of this stuff is and you can see over the years it's kind of the the water has you know bits of Old Brick and tile and the uh water is actually moving pretty quick but there was part of that old Prairie Rose bottle sitting there that's the chunk of metal I had to go past um I thought I just saw another bottle sticking out of the mud are you guys watching at home will see stuff before I do car tire I think there was a whole car stuck in the mud down here if I recall like that those are chassis components there probably some old car buried in there let's see if I can get up to the side here there used to be uh there used to be mine shafts around here too for uh coal mines there's a big chunk of glass right there get my shovel actually see there's a whole bunch of glass there so that might have been uh a pit that got knocked over I'm going to get my little shovel out and do a little digging in this area I think see what pops out of that dirt okay there's a little pocket of glass down here if you can see this this uh clay has formed around all this stuff and uh years of frost and also probably being squished the first time around of broken a lot of things that looks like the base of an old uh like a a beer glass or something see that right [Music] there this is all colored glass is a top of a beer bottle but there's a possibility that there might be some complete bottles in here it's just they're going to be bued oh I see uh yeah watch out for that metal I came in like a wrecking ball I heard you slide down there you all right I'm good thankfully I uh put my feet out to keep myself from slicing me on mle uh yeah say this is not for a novice down here I found a little pocket of concrete and uh broken glass and I thought well maybe this is a spot where there be an intact bottle there's an old 40s PR Rose bottle behind you back there but missing the top off it yeah a lot of brick and tile hard to say whether this is going to turn anything up and it's so mixed in with uh Big Blocks that sadly I think uh finding anything in this area might be oh hang on it looks like a little uh I got a little medicine bottle right there or was look it's got the stopper on it or did looks like it would have been in GL has a 1950 1950 what what does it say on the bottom uh ah1 1950 Alberta Hospitality Association I don't know Alberto hospitals maybe it's insanely thick I think it was actually it's really thick this looks like a medicine bottle for sure it has a little um it looks like an iodine bottle or something with that little dropper in it here's a intact flask oh did you find one yeah it's a screw top so it's not not super old super old it's actually all there just mix in oh yeah you've got uh some debris that's popped out yeah I think this is actually the looks almost like the bumper of a car or something here that's kind I have found remnants of automobiles down here well there's tires down right underneath you actually it's a really old skinny truck tire yeah what's this that looks like it's got por Sun enamel on it yeah I was just notion that here what if that's from a little sto maybe or a crunched up sign that yeah that's an anel so that wouldn't be Automotive looking at that this and the heav I'm kind of think it might be an old stove in white though stoves weren't usually well I know actually that's not true yeah it could be some kind of Appliance hard when you see things like this and and try and figure out what it is or what it was just sandwiched in between all these concrete blocks yeah and actually right above our heads there's dangling concrete blocks up there too is that your official poke stick yeah you've weaponized yourself we've gone back to the Stone Age oh here's an interesting little thing what is this there's oh odd what is that it looks like a like it looks like a pipe but I don't it's Chrome actually oh you know what that is I think that's part of a a windshield wiper arm I think you're right yeah the old uh vent windows yeah it's like an old uh it's either um yeah you're I think you're right it's probably like um a vent window so there could be some Automotive stuff that was just sticking right out of the uh the dirt by this giant chunk of glass there's also an old spark plug it's almost like embedded into the uh into the concrete so there was some kind of vehicle down here at some point you know looking at this and I got glass here it actually looks like they poured everything down and then poured conrete over it cuz if you look at oh maybe like literally in the substrate of the concrete so you think they crushed a bunch of stuff poured some concrete that concreted it in what to reinforce the bank maybe yeah could be it's so weird the the way that people treated and dealt with garbage back then okay well we can keep uh keep walking we can come back to this spot you're trying to figure what that is to me it looks like there's definitely car tires real skinny ones so old and some frame sections yeah okay let's keep let's keep trekking just mind your step around here there's uh easy to trip on the weeds and the vines sometimes these old bricks are dated too or uh they have the name of the brick plant on them that'll give you an idea of what we're looking at oh there's been beavers down here those are all chopped by beavers oh look at that I think that's a copper plate got like old copper roof uh yeah but I mean heck that's probably worth it just for the copper that's a lot of copper like I'm not kidding that's a big chunk of that's a big chunk right there I mean uh if a person was serious about scrapping and stuff they'd probably be hauling that up to the car more than an old bottle but frankly I don't want to deal with that today but see I'm standing on old building Foundation remnants and uh you can see blocks from old buildings Foundation bits Stones steps good thing we don't have like super like we don't have a lot of really deadly spiders or snakes and things I'm I'm just there's a old uh car tire it's a really random assortment of stuff down here there's tile like terracotta tile there's brick and it's all been uh freshly washed by the receding waterers so things like this like see that's a that's a car tire right there boy they got their money's worth out of the tread on that thing look at that that's bald as be go oh I see that I was mesmerized by the sounds of the uh ice on the river flow yeah metal pipe jar oh yeah little mason jar yeah you're finding all the intact stuff apparently but old Peg I mean I say old that's the laziest type of describing when you find an object but uh I mean everything down here is not going to be exactly brand new that's a tile like roof tile shingles and broken glass beer bottle popped out this is the thing like stuff like this it gets pushed out from the frost and so this bottle wouldn't have been visible to us so much last time another plug let's see made in Canada Champion number 10 Champion h10 maybe somebody watching at home can look that up and see what that was from it's weird when you put garbage back where you found it it still feels like littering I found one of those here that would have been a good bottle that's like a 1930s Orange Crush bottle it's just the bottom of it would have had the little crushy guy on it or the rest of it's around here somewhere I mean on a good day it's only worth like you know 10 bucks or something anyway I don't know what that what the heck that is we go down by a Greg there a whole pile of cut off oh yeah we must be near the spot where I uh descended last time that I didn't want to do this time cuz there was a pile of those uh sidewalls they must have there must have been some sort of Vulcanizing uh facility here or I don't know what why they would just have sidewalls for a tire glass block oh you know that's look it's part of a battery I think that's a glass battery battery oh okay yeah you know like a real early style yeah so probably some automotive shop was around here which is kind of encouraging because um I did hear that uh a guy was Finding old signs and stuff in this area that were popping out of the side yeah that's part of an old battery I think right there but this whole side of this Cliff is embedded with old automotive parts and glass and rubber car parts and stuff I would love to find like a big dealership sign I mean not that I I mean I found one not that long ago it was in a barn but you know to see an edge Pok it out and pull it out and have a nice Porcelain sign that would make my day was like stter Baker or Hudson yeah yeah the the Oddball makes what is that all these little circular what am I looking at here there's like little circular uh I don't know if they're bottles or what these are milk glass what is this oh piece of milk glass yeah it's got a design on it oh yeah could be part of a lampshade or something said there was whole buildings that got tossed in here so could really be anything what is this funny see look it's like there was a package of something and everything rotted away except for the contents wonder if those are all battery sell it feels more like plastic H probably prophylactics oh yeah found the old abandoned condom machine now I got that in my brain I mean really a person would have to take like a excavator and just plow right into the side of this and probably be an endless amount of garbage and trash it's why they've left it all these years I didn't even have to dig for that one not terribly old he's It screw screw cap style so probably 40s 50s somewhere in there but it's complete old cork top what'd you find a little old cork top bottle okay I don't know how old but it's not teens or 20s maybe yeah well if it had a cork a little medicine bottle you should rinse it off in the river yeah is that stuff kind of falls off off the edge here rolls down into the river so I'm searching up on the bank but Greg's finding stuff down here full set of stairs go oh that looks better oh yeah it's awfully windy down here but I see remember I was saying that if you look at a brick it'll tell you sometimes where it's from that's from uh the Clayburn brick plant in Saskatchewan that thing's been shut down for years I actually walked through that with my dad back in the early 2000s maybe 99 or so it was abandoned then and there was this giant brick Factory they had a whole town built around it and you had to spend like company dollars at The Company Store it was almost like borderline slavery um but uh they had abandoned it like in the 30s or something guys just left all their coats and hats just sitting on the racks it was like walking through a time machine it was really cool but that's where where that's from I've actually been in that place of all places that's a bottle Greg is foraging with his stick oh it's like old Whiskey Bottle or something yeah it's all there screw top screw top but it's Amberg glass which is kind of yeah it is amber glass yeah that's pretty neat yeah cool I was thinking you know all these chunks of cement and concrete and bricks and all somebody's dream up that hill at one point having to mop the floors and clean the bathrooms Drink Your Whiskey in the on the porch at least it wasn't in the jarro so yeah yeah I think we found part of their toilet up there too okay keep walking it seems like a lot of the debris has flowed down a bit it's a little ominous there's newer clothes sitting there you hope whoever is those were made it out okay it's stuck on a chunk of ice feel like we found the kitchen area cuz there's a rolling pin sticking out of the dirt right there a wooden one and some kind of glass bottle or is it right there but the ground's so soft and so covered in glass that I don't want to take too many more steps up because uh if you slip you could really tear yourself up whoa like that it's just there's nothing to stand on this is just waiting to fall okay I'm going to put this question out to the people at home what on Earth would they have done with all this rubber with these perforated holes in it there's just like strands and strands of it there's scraps of car tire I would only think maybe it was for uh like they did Vulcanizing or recycling of retreading of tires down here maybe but I don't know what what purpose those would have served what do you guys think what's the deal with all this rubber dangling off the side of the Hill here I know it's kind of unrelated to me looking for Treasures along the bank of the river or identifying junk is more like it but look how uh pretty this ice formation is as it melts and how thick this slab is it's like two feet thick to think that that was just floating on the river got washed up here like little icebergs pretty amazing Greg I found a $20 bill you see what I'm looking at somehow one single Monopoly $20 bill ended up on an ice flow in the middle of the river that must have been one heck of a game all right well well I I guess we can say we found some money you guys see that right there uh well we'll poke around a little bit more and maybe go grab some lunch yeah okay I was trying to figure out there's that big scrap pile of metal over there and it looked like it had wiring built into it must have been uh it almost looked like a uh telephone uh switchboard or I don't know what it was the old porcelain insulators on it yeah it had porcelain on it oh this looks like it had writing on it I finally find an antique sign and look at the shape it's in there was some kind of writing on that thing at one point might have been a sign you know what though at at an antique mall they'd still probably put like oh yeah 40 bucks it just needs a little cleanup eh in my best Canadian accent oh there's more orange crush bottles oh yeah and they've been orange crushed that one it's an oldie yeah there's a little crushy guy on it need find some old's another piece there tons yeah there's a lot of Orange Crush bottles in this area I don't think I've ever been down in this Zone before my there's another one there one there one there one there we're in like the Land of Old Orange Crush bottles and whatever this was is that a Coke no I has oh here's Coke right here yeah definely an older bottle yeah they're dated on the bottom if you ever find an old Coke ball look at the bottom you can see the date that one is 36 1936 must we getting to an older part of the pile here it's just soda bottles everywhere those probably one of the older ones actually in town yeah these now these bottles you know if you had enough of them in good shape they would be worth something but uh unfortunately these are all crushed there's one there darn it it's crushed as well wonder what what was inside this pale before it got knocked down it's where they kept their collection of black widow spiders or Brown were close it's an old uh applied label bottle which are fun cuz you can read what the brand was usually that one's missing but I the three little dots on it make me think that was a seven up and again all these rubber scraps the car tires I tested out the ascent here there's a spot if you grab onto that that little branch is sturdy that's how I did it and I heaved myself over the ledge I guess I could give you a hand rather than watch you struggle you got it here we go hey we did it oh this video should just be about watching two middle-aged guys try and climb a hill hey look they did it who knew so we're checking out another Trail up here um Greg you found like a 1920s tin car out here once right yeah yeah just a p ways other older stuff yeah that's the right era [Applause] I thought we had a hard time getting up the trail look that guy somebody lost his shoe pretty new looking makes you wonder what were they running from in this direction they were headed that way they ran so fast they cartooned their shoe off I guess we'll find out and so the environment has changed after a morning of walking around getting our feet dirty and uh climbing up hills we decided now to come to a restaurant so Greg is decided anyone he's going to get uh we're going to grab some food and call it a day but guys thank you so much for watching today's little Adventure video didn't bring any bottles home but uh we're going to drink a Coke out of a bottle now future collectible I guess and uh enjoy the rest of the afternoon so thanks for watching guys we'll see you all soon and as always bye for now [Music]

Channel: Curiosity Incorporated

Views: 23,739

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Id: ihML8BUpTxg

Length: 28min 53sec (1733 seconds)

Published: Wed May 15 2024