Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches Report.
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| Granite State Spring Water Company Bottle. |
Thursday evening the tide seemed right, so I decided to look for bottles instead of metal detect the site I've been working on. At first it didn't seem real promising, but then I came upon a piece of a nice old stopper-top bottle. That is the type of thing I refer to as a signal find. It said to me that good things might not be far off, so I kept looking.
Eventually I came to an area where there were lots of small rocks near the water line. It didn't look much different than the last time I was there, so I didn't have high hopes for that area, but I saw the corner of a bottle sticking out of the sand. I didn't know for sure if it was hole or just a broken piece, but the small diameter barrel shape and thick glass looked like an older bottle, so I carefully pried it out of the sand. It was the Granite State Spring Water Company bottle shown above - and in great shape.
Here is a better look at the embossing.
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| Granite State Spring Water Bottle Co. Bottle. |
Worthpoint gives the following description of the same kind of bottle.
This bottle was one of the featured pieces in an Indian Bottle article published in Antique Bottle and Glass Collector Magazine (pg. 29 Sept 2010). Dating between 1895 – 1905, this early crown top is clear in color standing 9” tall by 2-1/8” diameter. It is a straight sided design with very thick glass and a modest humped up base wave. There are several entrapped seed bubbles and it is deeply embossed with mountains, trees and a stream which shows two Indians by the water’s edge, one standing and one squatting down collecting fresh water. The bottle reads as follows: TRADE MARK GRANITE STATESPRING WATER CO.ATKINSON DEPOT, N.H. Granite State Spring Water Co., was actually located in Plaistow, New Hampshire and when it was constructed in the late 1800’s, was probably one of the most modern bottling plants in the country. The product was shipped as far as Florida by rail. Ownership changed hands many times, and eventually bankruptcy was the outcome. About 1938 the company was purchased by Leroy’s Beverages, Inc. of Newburyport, Massachusetts that went on later to produced 7-UP.
Source link: https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/antique-indian-spring-water-bottle-136966987
So the bottle is at least 115 years old. It is in amazing condition and has some nice bubbles in the glass. I'm always happy to find a blown bottle.
Notice that the product was shipped to Florida by rail.
A couple more bottles were found, but not nearly as interesting. They are shown below.
That was a nice little walk.
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One thing I wanted to point out about sampling is that you should adapt your scan to the situation. For the inland site I showed a grid. A regular grid would be used when no particular pattern of targets is anticipated. That would more often be the case for an inland hunt.
Searching the beach, you can't cover the entire beach, and you don't need to. You can get a good idea of the areas that will be most productive by "reading" the beach. That is another topic.
A common distribution pattern on a beach would be what I've described as a coin line, which will normally run roughly parallel to the water line. A coin line, as I've explained before, can be thick or thin, but you only need to intersect such a line a few times to start to get the idea where the line runs.
you have reason to believe there is a line you can adjust your scan to include the likely position and direction of the line. When you get some idea of the direction and width of the line, then you will wnat to work a tighter pattern over the line. Keep paying attention to the position and type of each find and keep adjusting your search pattern accordingly.
A zig-zag pattern is one useful search pattern for finding coin lines on the beach. Here is a link to one of the first posts I did on coin lines. It includes additional notes on the strategy.
There are probably at least a dozen posts on coin lines and just as many on search patterns in the treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com blog site. You can find them if you want by using the search box on the blog.
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Still no tropical activity of interest.
The tides are moderate.
The surf is two feet or less with no big changes predicted for at least a few days.
Happy hunting,
Treasureguide@comcast.net
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