Discovery

[spinner1]

Discovery

Went on a familiar stream today for an hour. Wanted to fish an easy stretch alone. Only little ones but was still fun.

Found this old root cellar in my wandering. It had a spring near it.

I found it near a trout stream I was about to fish on Crawford/Richland County line. The root cellar would be an excellent place to keep salted venison and fish to get through a rough Wisconsin winter,

This is one of the more elaborate root cellars I have ever seen. Typically the cellar was dug into a hillside and the floor was left unfinished. This one has a rock laid floor. This structure could have very well been used as a living place until the homestead was built. Then it was used as root cellar. There are no other buildings near it.

Back in the day before banks a family would keep their valuables in the root cellar buried or under a false floor rock under a huge gunny sack of potatoes

This root cellar was obviously built quite some time ago. Just look at the large tree on the right. It has grown there after the cellar was built and abandon. Would have to look at the rings in the tree to tell how old this tree.

My friend who does lots of metal detecting wanted to know exactly where it was. He says the flat stone in the structure are a minimum 100 years old. This structure was built before 99.5% of folks looking at this photo were even a twinkle in their parents eyes.

[sagefisher]

Talk about a neat find. Would be a great place (if safe) to enter and do some digging. Take your friend there but agree to 50% of his finds

Let us know if you go back to explore the place.

Larry ---sagefisher---

[jcampbell]

This quit a unique find. Maybe the property owner would have some information on its origin. The concrete slab on the entry may have been added later. Could have been more than a root cellar, at one time, for certain.